FREE
I N
F O C U S
VOL.21, NO.2
F O R
P E O P L E
O V E R
More than 125,000 readers throughout Greater Baltimore
For Jayne Miller, the beat goes on
FEBRUARY 2024
I N S I D E …
PHOTO COURTESY WBAL
By Robert Friedman She “retired” last year after 40 years in front of the WBAL-TV cameras, but awardwinning investigative reporter Jayne Miller says she’s continuing her “conversation with people involved in the news” via her weekly radio broadcasts. Being in front of the mike rather than the TV cameras “isn’t really reporting as much as it is informing through conversation,” said the 69-year-old journalist, who interviews key newsmakers on Saturdays at 11 a.m. on WBAL NewsRadio. Neither television nor radio were in her original career plans, Miller said in a recent interview with the Beacon. She started out as a reporter in 1976 for a small daily newspaper in State College, Pennsylvania, after she graduated from Penn State with a major in journalism. Miller soon moved in front of the TV cameras in Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, and then, in 1979, to WBAL-TV. She worked a two-year stint at CBS News in Washington in the early 80s but returned to Baltimore for the remainder of her career. The cameras may now be gone, but Miller indicated that the conversational means over radio of finding out what’s what can be as enlightening as oft-times confrontational newspaper and TV reporting. “News gathering and reporting require the same skills, regardless if it is for newspapers, radio or TV,” she said. Among her many accolades while in front of the cameras as WBAL-TV’s chief investigative reporter, Miller received in 2022 the Radio Television Digital News Foundation’s lifetime achievement award. In 2016 she won the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, the top prize for broadcast journalism. She was cited for a National Edward R. Murrow Award in
5 0
LEISURE & TRAVEL
Explore London’s hidden pockets of peace; plus, the perks of premium economy airline seating page 16
Although Jayne Miller retired from WBAL-TV last year, she’s on the radio every week. On her Saturday morning talk show on WBAL NewsRadio, the investigative journalist interviews key players in Baltimore, covering topics from vacant housing to horse racing.
2012. Baltimore Magazine has twice named her as one of the 50 most powerful people in the region.
The power of questions Miller has said it was curiosity that drove her to journalism, that as an eightyear-old girl, when the fire siren went off
Welcome Home to Harmony
in the middle of the night in her small Pennsylvania hometown, she was the first one out the door. “I tell folks that want to be involved in journalism,” she said, “if you’re not a curious person — if you don’t always wonder,
ARTS & STYLE
A shocking Agatha Christie mystery takes center stage at Vagabond Players page 19
See JAYNE MILLER, page 21
Sc a n to G Ke ys to H e t You r a ppi ne ss
FITNESS & HEALTH k Help for winter blues k Coping with constant coughs
4
LAW & MONEY 12 k Disaster-proof your documents k Best books on financial topics ADVERTISER DIRECTORY
23
PLUS CROSSWORD, BEACON BITS, CLASSIFIEDS & MORE