Mel Watson knew what was coming.
She intentionally sat with her back to the window, so she could momentarily feign ignorance when, on one summer Wednesday at about 9:40 a.m., the morning editorial meeting was interrupted by the startled yells of her co-workers as a camel casually strolled by the window.
The idea had come to Watson during a much colder and snowier Wednesday months earlier, during her first winter as news director at WTVG-TV, Channel 13. Observing the winter-induced malaise of her coworkers, she made a promise inspired by that one GEICO commercial about "hump day," otherwise known as Wednesday: “One day I'm going to bring a camel to this TV station.”
A few strings pulled, a few emails exchanged with Indian Creek Zoo in Michigan, and there was a camel relaxing on the green lawn outside.
"It's one of the things I try to do in a crazy news business," said Watson. "Even when I had to make tough decisions and things didn't always go right, I always tried to make it fun."
That moment, in its free-spirited mix of fun and ambition, encapsulated the philosophy that guided Watson through her decades-long career in local broadcast journalism. On Monday, after a career spanning 32 years and five television stations, Watson officially retired.
Wish
Watson began her career by reporting on the Boston Tea Party. The newspaper she composed for her fifth-grade history class had the headlines ("Massacre kills five") and everything else: Weather, sales, even obituaries. This was before computers, so the March 6, 1970, issue of the Boston Times was published on poster-board in premium pencil.
Watson got an A.
She soon became a voracious reader of the Greensburg Daily News, the community newspaper of her southern Indiana hometown. Every night, she and her father Jim watched the 6 p.m. newscast on WISH-TV, Channel 8. That's when Watson made her own wish: To one day be a news anchor in Indianapolis.
Journalism never answered her wish, and probably for the best. After Watson graduated from Ball State University with a degree in broadcast journalism, she landed her first job at WANE-TV in Fort Wayne as an associate producer. What she thought would be her gateway to news anchoring became a very different type of anchor.
"Once I started producing, I found out that really I was more suited to being behind the camera than being in front," said Watson. "I think there's a certain personality that news producers need to have. You need to multitask, and take the blame when things go wrong," because you green-light everything that makes it to the screen and into people's living rooms — a responsibility that suited Watson just fine.
She eventually became WANE-TV's producer. In 1994 she left for WTHR, Channel 13 in Indianapolis, where she produced the 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts.
Watson never dreamed of working at a national network like CNN or ABC News. She'd always "wanted to tell stories that could only be told in local journalism," the sort that drilled down into local communities in a way that could truly transform them.
In 1998, she committed herself to the television station that would define her career: WEWS-TV, Channel 5 in Cleveland.
Swat
Joe Pagonakis was the news anchor at WANE-TV, and he left for Cleveland around the time Watson left for Indianapolis. When Watson's husband, Rick, was transferred to Cleveland with Sherwin-Williams in 1998, Pagonakis was the first person she called.
His reference landed Watson the 6 p.m. newscast producing job, and she eventually become the executive producer of investigations and special projects. Pagonakis became one of her investigators — “kind of a full circle moment, if you will,” Watson reflected. In 2008, they worked together to return a total of $250,000 to people who had been scammed in the Cleveland area. Their efforts won them an Emmy for Community Service.
Jonathan Walsh had been at WTOL-TV, Channel 11 for a decade when he applied to the investigative consumer reporter position at Channel 5. Even from the first interview, he knew he and the energetic, approachable Watson were going to get along.
"She was always interested not only in the stories that we were telling and investigating, but had a deep interest in the people she was managing, in who we are, who our families are, what matters to us, and that meant the world to me,” said Walsh. "Sometimes you get micromanagers. She was very involved, but she wasn't a micromanager."
When Channel 5 collaborated with ABC News to cover thrift stores recklessly reselling recalled items, Watson and Walsh journeyed into the field to find their culprits. Watson went undercover, posing as a curious customer with particularly astute questions.
To boost morale as ratings periods approached, Watson came up with catchy "themes.” One day she walked in with oversized fly swatters, and an important announcement: "We need to swat the competition."
“You're writing your story on the desk," recalled Walsh, “and you'd peek over to this big old fly swatter” — Watson had them hung on doors and desks — “and you'd just have a chuckle.”
In 2011, Watson's investigative team was honored with the Peabody Award for exposing the link between a military base in Antarctica and cancer in veterans that served there. The investigation spurred government action.
By the time Watson left WEWS-TV in 2016, she had won more than a dozen Emmys and Associated Press awards. Six of them recognized Watson as Best Producer.
Hey!
Chris Fedele knew Watson long before he became general manager of Channel 13. They had been classmates at Ball State University, where Fedele observed her leadership skills first-hand. So when he reached out to Watson in August, 2018, to ask for help in finding a news director, and she responded with a cheery, “Hey, what about me?”, he didn’t have to think too hard.
“I knew she could do the job even though she's never been news director,” he said. “That's why I took the risk and hired her.”
Fedele couldn’t have anticipated how dramatic Watson’s tenure would be. Shortly after she became news director, a malware infection collapsed the station’s editing system and made its video archives inaccessible. No sooner had that been resolved than the coronavirus pandemic invited itself into Toledo, forcing Channel 13 to operate entirely outside the studio.
Watson had to prove herself pretty much immediately, and Fedele thinks she did: “She's only been here for three, three-and-a-half years, but she’s made a huge impact.”
Under Watson, Channel 13 expanded its coverage across all platforms, from social media to mobile apps. Watson played a key role in building the OTT (over-the-top) desk, which provided the dexterity needed for breaking news coverage.
The most important challenge, though, was human.
“We have to find people who are passionate about local television news and digital media,” said Fedele. “They're harder and harder to find. With the internet everyone would rather be an influencer than be the 6 p.m. news anchor. You need to have a good culture to cultivate and grow people who will champion local news.”
That’s the culture Watson, with her patient willingness to work one-on-one with people, cultivated: “Coaching, leading, mentoring, yeah, that's her strength,” Fedele said. “The people she was able to bring in and grow, they're still here, and they'll continue to grow.”
One of those people is Michael Baldwin. When he was a general assignment reporter at WEWS-TV, he would regularly visit Watson’s office to seek her advice. He found her uniquely approachable, with her preternaturally enthusiastic “Hey!”, and he learned a lot from her management style: warm and playful, but tough when needed and keen on accountability.
One day he came to her office and announced that he wanted to be a news director someday.
“Sure you do!” Watson said with a laugh. “Reporters don’t give up their salaries and on-air egos.”
Last summer, while working as news director at a TV station in Bridgeport, W.Va., Baldwin got a call from Watson. Not long after, he arrived at Channel 13 as its new assistant news director.
Smoky
Watson’s lifelong commitment to local news was dramatically vindicated by the defining story of her Toledo tenure. She was in southern Indiana with her father, Jim, shortly after he’d been diagnosed with brain cancer, when her phone buzzed with a tip from a source in Cleveland — just one node in the network of local sources she’d spent her career building.
Watson immediately mobilized her investigative team, and her father watched as she, sitting in his living room with her laptop and phone, broke the news of the FBI charging four Toledo City Council members with bribery and extortion.
Channel 13 won the Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for its coverage, but that mattered less to Watson than the opportunity to share with her father, her “biggest fan,” the fruits of his labor. The 35 years he worked on a factory assembly line, the overtime hours he sought to help pay for Watson’s college education — it had all been worth it. It had meant everything.
Just as Watson’s career began with her father, so too did it end with him. She and her husband, Rick, had planned to retire in 2022, but moved up their plans after Jim passed away from glioblastoma earlier this year. They, along with Watson’s mother, will be relocating to the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, home of childhood and honeymoon memories
Watson mourns her father, but she doesn’t mourn her early retirement. She and her husband had always planned for one. The motto of their marriage was the motto of their life: “Work hard, play hard.”
First Published December 19, 2021, 1:30 p.m.
