Detroit’s Toughest Newsman

By Mark Brown/Converged Citizen

When I was in grade school we had an assignment in English class on interviewing. One of the questions on the assignment asked which famous person I’d like to interview. There was only one person who came to my mind and still does after all these years…

Bill Bonds.

Bonds, the former anchorman at WXYZ-TV Channel 7 in Detroit, died of a heart attack on Dec. 13, 2014 at the age of 82. When I heard the news, my mind went back to that day in grade school and some of the questions I wanted to ask him, but never had the chance to. I also spent some time over the holiday break thinking about how he would cover events currently affecting the region, such as Detroit’s emergence from bankruptcy or the tug-of-war over same-sex marriage in Michigan.

Bonds ruled television news in Detroit during a career that spanned four decades. In the age before 24-hour news channels and multiple news networks, he is remembered fondly in Windsor as well. He forever changed the way the news was presented and was the TV personality the common man could identify with. He set the standard from which current journalists and journalists-in-training would benefit.

Bonds was the ultimate Detroiter with a personality that matched the Motor City – tough and compassionate. Raised on the city’s east side, he was by his own account not a very good student. But he always knew that he wanted to be a journalist. Graduating from the University of Detroit Mercy, he worked for several Detroit area radio stations, most notably at WKNR-AM (1310), or what was known as “Keener 13.″ The station was known for its just-the-facts style of news presentation, unlike the blood-and-guts style of its Top 40 rival, CKLW-AM (800) in Windsor. But Bonds thought he had more to offer and he claimed he didn’t have a great radio voice.

He unsuccessfully auditioned several times for Detroit TV stations, but Channel 7 took notice after Bonds covered a tornado in Macomb County for radio. Bonds interviewed victims, the governor and other then climbed a telephone pole with his tape recorder, hooked it to the wires with alligator clips and fed his stories back to the station. WXYZ hired him soon after that, at a time when their news division was struggling.

Management at Channel 7 saw something in Bonds and began to build a team with him. When Detroit exploded in insurrection in July 1967, WXYZ covered the story wall-to-wall and things just went up from there. By 1973, with Bonds as anchor, Channel 7 was number one. ABC owned WXYZ at the time and they had Bonds briefly working for their stations in Los Angeles and New York, but Bonds would always end up back home.

If there is one thing today’s journalists could be grateful to Bonds for, it was presentation. Before TelePrompTers became commonplace, Bonds believed viewers would trust an anchor who looked them in the eye, so he made eye contact important. He certainly had no problem inserting his own opinion into some of the stories he covered and for that reason he became the most loved and hated personality in Detroit television.

The most important lesson that today’s journalists could learn from Bill Bonds?

He would strive to make sure his A-game was on and he made sure everyone he worked with was as well. If you were a reporter doing a live shot, you’d better know your story inside and out or you’d look like an idiot. One YouTube clip shows Bonds throwing a profanity-laced tirade over a poorly-written promo script. One newscast I watched when I was younger had Bonds suddenly stop and bark “Let’s go, prompter!”

As tough as Bonds was on others, he was certainly toughest on himself. His battles with alcoholism were very public. The death of one of his children in a drunk-driving accident in the 1980s didn’t help matters either. He went to rehab several times, once after he challenged Detroit Mayor Coleman Young to a boxing match on live TV. It was a very public drunk-driving arrest that cost Bonds his job in 1995. Bonds would later return to the station to do commentaries and host specials.

There was no question Bill Bonds was the most dominant news anchor in Detroit. Why? Because he asked the questions we wanted asked. He held newsmakers accountable for their actions and called them out on their BS. He was, you could say, the last of Detroit’s old-school newsmen.

I was an assignment desk intern at Channel 7 in the fall of 1996, my last semester pursuing a communications degree at Wayne State University. I was just a kid at the time. Bonds was gone by then, which I thought was unfortunate. Although I would have certainly found him intimidating, I would have loved to ask him those questions I thought about when I did that assignment so many years ago.

Bill Bonds.

A newsman with the personality of the city he covered and loved.