Advisory Council

Through the birth of broadcast journalism and its formative years covering World War II, to the development of television news and molding a generation of Iowa State University students, Jack Shelley has been called a living legend in Iowa broadcast history.

"I'll always remember listening with my dad to Jack Shelley's crisp, clear voice booming over the radio," said Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley. "It was like listening to something from a higher power."

Shelley was born in Boone, Iowa in 1912. His interest in journalism began at his high school newspaper, where he worked as a reporter and columnist. After graduation, he took jobs at two regional railroads at the beginning of the Depression.

In the fall of 1931, with $35 earned from railroad work, he enrolled in the University of Missouri journalism department.

After graduation, Shelley briefly worked at the Iowa Herald, in Clinton before taking a job at WHO radio in Des Moines in 1935, a 50,000-watt station.

Shelley joined H.R. Gross as a two-man team delivering news live on the air, as no recording equipment was available at the time.

Shelley was the focus of a dissertation by Chris Allen. "You have to remember that in those days, in the 1930s, the vast majority of our audience found radio news something brand new and very exciting to them. All these people who lived in small towns and on the farms in Iowa had never had anything that brought news to them so quickly," he is quoted as saying in Allen's work. "And very quickly we established a rapport with the audience and a kind of faithful listenership that I don't think has ever been duplicated since."

With radio broadcasting still in its infancy, Gross and Shelley developed their own methods, Allen wrote. They got help from the UP, which began adapting their reports for broadcast.

Shelley said the station had a strong presence throughout Iowa as well as the Midwest, featuring live talent shows, weekly barn dances, and news broadcasts in between shows. In 1940, Shelley took over as news director.

Station Manager Joe Maland had begun using sponsors to make his news department profitable. At first, single sponsors served as underwriters of the programming, Allen wrote. Later, multiple sponsors became the norm.

Shelley told Allen he preferred having multiple sponsors, which lessened the chance of influence by a single powerful advertiser.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Shelley's direction thrust WHO into the forefront of war coverage in the region. Listeners flooded the station with letters about its coverage. Allen found that some listeners in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and other Rocky Mountain states regularly tuned in to WHO for war news.

Shelley served the station as an overseas correspondent in Europe and the Pacific. At the end of the war, he returned to Des Moines and his news director's job at WHO.

He also had a hand in the formation of what would become the Radio Television News Director's Association (RTNDA), a professional organization founded to guarantee autonomy for news directors and standards for broadcast journalism.

Shelley became the third person to serve as president of the group in 1950. In 2000, he was awarded the RTNDA's John S. Hogan award, named after its first president. Other Hogan award recipients include Hugh Downs and Walter Cronkite.

Throughout the 1950s, Shelley continued to serve as the face of news for thousands of Iowans.

"If you lived in Iowa in the 1950s and 60s and didn't know who Jack Shelley was, then it's almost certain you didn't own a radio or TV," said Bob Greenley. "For many people, Jack Shelley was the news."

In 1954, WHO received a license to begin broadcasting television signals. Shelley told Allen the first broadcast was "utter chaos," with the newsroom still under construction and technical difficulties that kept any film files from rolling on-air.

Shelley eventually anchored the 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts, Allen wrote, with the anchor and news director working 12-hour days.

Jerry Bowen, CBS correspondent and student of Shelley's in the 1960s, remembered Shelley's "warm, commanding style" of delivering news to Iowa homes.

"If Jack said it was so, you could go to bed assured it was true. And when he said goodnight with that twinkle in his eye, you turned off the set feeling even better," Bowen said. "He was and is our Walter Cronkite."

From 1968 until 1988, Shelley served as the executive director of the Iowa Broadcast News Association. He was awarded the group's Distinguished Service Award when he retired. In 1971, the IBNA honored him by establishing the Jack Shelley Award.

"Jack Shelley didn't make broadcast history in Iowa, he lived it," said Mike Peterson, news director at KMA/KKBZ in Shenandoah, Iowa and current president of the IBNA. "We thank him for everything he did in the media, at Iowa State, and with the IBNA"

In 1965, Shelley left professional broadcasting and took a job teaching broadcast journalism at Iowa State University, where he taught for 17 years.

Shelley told Bugjea his days at Iowa State's journalism department were among his happiest.

"Then, as now, we had such respect for each other," Shelley said. "You had the feeling at Iowa State that when somebody had an accomplishment, that you all shared in it."

At Iowa State, Shelley served for six years as a member of the accreditation committee of the American Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Shelley was a founding member of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, and served as its president in 1981. In 1979, Shelley was appointed to a special committee advising the state supreme court on the use of cameras and recorders in classrooms.

A mandatory university retirement policy forced Shelley to teach his last class at the end of the 1982 school year at age 70.

In 1983, the Radio-TV Division of the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication made Shelley the first winner of its Distinguished Broadcast Journalism Educator Award.

In retirement, Shelley worked in his native Boone as president of its historical society, was a member of the board of ISU's College for Seniors, and an honorary member of the Greenlee School's Advisory Council.

Shelley received the J.W. Schwartz award in 1993, the highest award given by ISU's Greenlee School.

Noting the award, The Des Moines Register said Shelley had earned a place in Iowa journalism history for being a pioneer and a risk-taker as a professional, and helping to launch countless careers as an educator.

"If I get really personal, the blessings of my life were that I was married to two lovely women and a father to two wonderful sons and then a grandfather and great-grandfather," Shelley told Bugeja. "All that didn't require my brains."