If I were broadcasting the news that radio legend Paul Harvey died, I would end the announcement with the country song, “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes?” For indeed we have lost another broadcaster icons.
    I never met Paul Harvey, but he played a part in my life. Back in the ‘80’s I had a big decision to make in my career. A radio station had asked me to do a talk show. I was anchoring newscasts on a television station at the time. The issue was that my radio offer was contingent upon my doing commercials on my show. My boss at the television station, the news director, said firmly that news journalists do not do commercials. 
    I responded that Paul Harvey does commercials and millions of people listen, trust, and find his news reporting credible every day.
    “Make up your mind, Bart,” my boss said unmoved by my argument. “Do you want to be a journalist or be a huckster?”
    That did it. He had made my decision for me. While I understood the need for news reporters to be untainted by the reality or perception of commercial interest (although Walter Cronkite, Mike Wallace to name but two journalistic icons had pitched products back in the day) I found what “the huckster” did more appealing—and challenging.
    Harvey never viewed himself as a newsman, even though some 18 million people tuned into his daily reports on the day's events.
    Considered the greatest radio salesman of all time, he had this wonderful talent for flowing seamlessly out of a news story into a pitch for a product. It was a combination of the way he used the microphone—his intonation, pauses, inflection, voice timber and sheer talent.
    Today’s group of talk show self-serving ideologues ought to listen to tapes of Paul Harvey. And pompous news journalists ought to consider the Harvey package as well.
    If they posed the old saying, “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore” as a question on Jeopardy, the answer most certainly would be: Paul Harvey.