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Gordon Deal Is a Self-Described Gatherer

“I’m not a news organization. I source everything. We don’t have correspondents. I’ll always tell you where the story is coming from.”

Jim Cryns

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Only hot dogs and beer have spent more time in sports stadiums than Gordon Deal.

In 2011, he became the New York Giants PA announcer at MetLife Stadium. Today he’s the PA announcer for the New York Giants football club, a job he snared in 2011. “That’s the year they went on to win the Super Bowl,” Deal said. “This season will be my 12th season.”

Deal did the same for the New York Knicks. He was also a PA announcer for the New York Liberty of the WNBA.

“The year I joined the Giants in 2011, they went on to win the Super Bowl later that year. This season will be my 12th.

Deal spent a lot of time in the booth for Rutgers football. Play-by-play broadcasting was always close to his heart, and he says that a play-by-play guy is essentially a breaking news reporter in the grander scheme of things.

“What I mean by that is you’re talking about something that is unfolding before your eyes. You’re the voice at the scene of the fire, with flames pouring out the window. That’s like calling a pass play, interception, or a blocked punt. It’s always breaking news.”

“My first public address gig was at Rutgers, when at WRSU. I was randomly asked to announce a women’s volleyball game. These, to me, at the time, were the most beautiful women on the planet, so I may have had ulterior motives.”

Deal believes professional teams these days are looking for a ‘homer atmosphere’ rather than the unbiased announcers.

“I used to do that ‘homer’ stuff for the New York Knicks. The fans responded. In football, if the other team has the ball, I’ll really play up the ‘It’s third-down.’ Trying to rally the crowd.”

His ambitions to be a play-by-play guy started in his driveway. He would shoot hoops, envisioning hitting the game-winning shot. I was that suburban kid who had a basketball hoop nailed to the side of the house, and I’d narrate myself playing.

‘Deal moves to his right… it’s a floater to beat the buzzer. Nets win. Nets win.’ He did the same thing with a soccer goal rigged up between two trees in the yard.

Since the beginnings of mankind, there have been the proverbial hunters and gatherers. For daily news, Deal is most definitely a self-described gatherer.

“I’m an aggregator,” Deal said. “I’m not a news organization. I source everything. We don’t have correspondents. I’ll always tell you where the story is coming from.”

Deal said you might not like his sources, but that’s not something he can control.

“I’ll get an email or tweet accusing me of bias on one thing or another,” Deal explained. “You could drill down all day and not find bias in what I do. If you say you have proof of something, show it to me. Prove I’m a liberal or on the right.”

He said on Twitter that he’s willing to take a kick in the pants if he’s wrong. “Still, show me I’m wrong. I get it from both sides. That’s a good sign.”

“We do a news analysis on our show. We compliment those with sound bites. My job between 5:00 and 7:00 in the morning is to make you the most knowledgeable listeners out there.”

Deal worked at WINS and WCBS as a writer and reporter. Later, he worked for The Wall Street Journal This Morningwhich went belly up in 2014. Deal’s show, This Morning with Gordon Deal, is available on over 300 terrestrial radio stations. It’s also on TuneIn, iHeartRadio, Audacy, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Pandora.

Deal attended Rutgers and graduated in communications in 1989. Like most first-year college students, Deal had no idea what he wanted to do. “I guess I chose a generic degree. My grades were so bad, I was on academic probation in my freshman year. I was too stupid to keep a routine. I thought I was going to play soccer.”

He said he didn’t have the grades to declare communications as a major, so he took business classes until his GPA was high enough to declare communications.

“It was a communication degree, not broadcast journalism,” he explained. “This was a curriculum that didn’t include sitting behind a microphone to hone skills. WRSU was our radio station, and I found out they were looking for people to work there,” Deal said. “Everything I learned about radio broadcasting came from there.”

“I wasn’t the most informed guy back then. I could tell you the name of the assistant coach at Boise State, but I couldn’t name the governor of my own state.”

In school, Deal started writing for The Daily Targum.

(I know. I had to look up Targum.)

“Some of my classmates were writing for the paper. Then in the same paper, there was an ad for the radio station. They were looking for people to do music, news, sales, sports.”

When a play-by-play gig opened up at Rutgers, they didn’t have to ask Deal twice. “I liked to travel, and the school was picking up the tab. I got to fly on the plane with the teams. It was a dream come true.”

After Rutgers, Deal Joined the local radio station, WCTC. It was Rutgers’ flagship for sports. WCTC was the first radio station built post WWII.

“I was hired as a news guy, but I was promised the chance to climb the play-by-play ladder as time went on.”

“You have to tell a good story as an announcer. When I listen to the guys in the booth, it’s all about the stories for me. There are a lot of complaints about announcers, but they’re critical to the experience.

Deal said he makes sure he’s discussing the right angle for the story. To prepare for his shows, he listens to talk radio and sports.

“I’m trying to absorb it all so I can ask good questions. I need to know as much as the average listener.”

His show doesn’t take calls. During any 60 minutes, you will hear a range of talk from trendy stories or something that piques Deal’s interest. “In one segment, I might spend four minutes of analysis on how pro-life advocates will take their fight to the states. For the next six minutes, you’ll hear why homeowners in Boise are experiencing dropping home prices. I like to mix things up. That’s the pace we like.”

He said he does have fun doing a segment called ‘Mike Drop.’ This segment features producer Mike Gavin’s humorous but entirely true yet outlandish stories from around the world.

“It focuses on stupid criminals. That’s where we let our personalities fly, and listeners love it. It proves we’re not robots.”

“We don’t bring people into the studio. I’m outside of Princeton, New Jersey,” Deal said. “Some oil executive isn’t going to be strolling into our little studio. I’d say 90 percent of our broadcast is news. The rest is industry analysis and entertainment.”

Lots of good things have happened to Deal. Unfortunately, some memories are not so pleasant. A man might judge himself by how he treated an ailing person. In that case, Deal said he felt a strong sense of duty to his dad. In 2012, he became the New York Giants PA Announcer at MetLife Stadium.

“My father died more than a year ago,” Deal said. As close as he was to his dad, he’s said he’s holding up pretty well. “When he had his stroke, we felt we lost him that day. He struggled physically, but I think the hardest part for us was the fact he could no longer speak.”

Deal’s father was a salesman, and he lived off his ability to speak. “He could walk into a room and chat with anybody,” Deal explained. For him to lose his speech was particularly grueling. “No more stories from Dad. No more hearing about his old red-neck stories from Georgia.”

After five years of struggle, Deal said they were almost relieved when he passed. Not because they didn’t love him. They only had a shell of the man he once was.

“He was my hero,” Deal said. “I loved him. We had a country music bond between us. It was hard to see an old sales guy lose his most valued asset-his words.”

There’s a video of Deal singing with his father to work on his father’s speech therapy. “It was a Toby Keith and Willie Nelson mashup,” Deal said. “We’d piece together some songs. One of the hardest aspects was we could see him formulating a response to a question, but the words wouldn’t come out. He couldn’t muster an answer.”

His mother is still with him. “She’s as sharp as a tack, fit as a fiddle,” Deal said. He left out In Fine Fettle and Picture of Health.

Deal said his mother still works out each day. “She just came up to New Jersey from South Carolina for my daughter’s graduation from high school,” Deal said. “I had several people suggest she was my wife. She looks like she’s in her fifties. Either she looks young, or I look old.”

His father met his mom on a blind date. “Dad was one of those guys who could sell anything. He had that southern charm, one of those guys you instantly liked. People felt like they knew him for a long time. He knew how to make people feel important. Feel good.”

Just as his father used his words to make a living, his son followed in similar but vastly different footsteps.

 Deal says he tries to make himself useful when he’s not on the air.

“My son and I started playing golf together. He plays soccer at Stockton University. We have that in common. My daughter is a dancer and is off to school this fall.”

There’s a YouTube video of Deal jamming out to George Thorogood with his daughter and one of her friends in the backseat. It’s touching to see him so connected to his daughter.

“I’m into blues in general,” Deal said. “I’m not musically inclined at all. My sister was a good piano player growing up. They wanted me to play, but I got lucky. I broke my wrist. I was never so happy in my life.”

Imagine Deal’s joy if he ever breaks a leg.

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BNM Writers

Dagen McDowell Is Ready For A New Adventure With Fox Business

“Every decision in America is born of policy, On the show, we bring that to our show. Talk about the news of the day.”

Jim Cryns

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To know Dagen McDowell, you must understand what she comes from, where she comes from. You won’t know her until you know the lessons, kindness, and determination set forth by her parents.

Her parents operated a small grocery store, LW Roark and Company. Charles and Joyce McDowell were high school sweethearts and both went to college but decided to go back home and open a business. “This is in the middle of nowhere,” McDowell said. “It was a wholesale grocery store. They sold it in the late 90s.”

She said her parents were smart, encouraging, and took every opportunity to teach McDowell and her brother.

“They’d constantly talk up people who came into the store. Both of them have and had an insatiable curiosity about everything. They felt they learned things through their customers. It was more fun to learn about things from other people.”

McDowell’s parents never took a week off work. Never. The family took no vacations as most families would. Once while McDowell was in college at Wake Forest University, the family visited the Air and Space Museum on the Mall in D.C.

“Both of my parents were very interested in architecture and landscapes. We’d go to Williamsburg and just look at the buildings.”

McDowell joined FOX News Channel in 2003 and helped launch FOX Business Network as a founding anchor in 2007.

Her mother passed away three years ago and her father is still very much a part of her life. Her father was a constant teacher.

“One time my father, who we called Dowell McDowell, was putting up an outbuilding and asked me how long one line should be if the other line was such and such. He taught me the Pythagorean theorem when I was about 4 years old.”

McDowell was nurtured by parents with endless curiosity.

“I was raised by parents who would always debate and converse around the dinner table. We shared breakfast and dinner together every day. They loved learning, were always inquisitive, never afraid to ask a question. My parents shared a fearlessness and passed that on to me. I’ve never been embarrassed to ask people questions. I love talking to people and finding out about things.”

For a long time, McDowell had no idea what she wanted to do for a living. She knew if she worked at different jobs she’d eventually figure out what she was good at.

“I knew I was a decent writer, but I always tried to get information out of people, what they were doing. Ask if they were fulfilled and happy.”

At Wake, Forest McDowell majored in art history and had every intention of working in a museum, possibly as a curator.

“I interned at the Center for Contemporary Arts. I lived in Venice, Italy for a while. Wake Forest owns a house in Venice.”

After that it was Colorado. She moved back to New York during the recession of 1991 with a duffel bag. She took the Amtrak to New York City and sublet an apartment for six months.

“I had no TV, just a radio. I knew I could find something good to do in New York, there were so many jobs. I always wanted to live in the city. Either the city or way out in the country. Nowhere in between.”

She said being in New York made her feel anything was possible. This was January in 1994 when job ads were still in the physical newspaper, like the New York Times. McDowell interviewed at Institutional Investor through a referral from a friend.

“It was a brilliant magazine with terrific writing,” McDowell explained. “Very prominent in the industry. They were looking for someone to work with the newsletter written for the financial community.”

She’d cover topics like the bond business, Wall Street, and money management. The magazine made her take a reporting test where you’d make up a story and write it. She was offered a job and worked there for three years.

“I learned to be a journalist there,” McDowell said. “I could write but I became a better journalist. We’d break news, create our sources, and learn more and more about finance. People love to talk about what they do if you show interest.”

The next big job was SmartMoney.com, a resource and web newspaper for private investors. There McDowell wrote a personal finance column. She started doing commentary on television shows, the way a lot of people in different professions tend to do. “Then I started making more appearances on weekend financial or business shows,” McDowell said.

She got a call from Neil Cavuto about 20 years ago and he told McDowell, ‘Kid, you want a job? I know you don’t have much professional TV experience. We’ll give you some training and you’ll figure it out. If you do, you stay. If not, you go.’

McDowell said she was glad she was a writer first before she arrived at Fox. She writes her own scripts and has a background in finance and business writing.

“Before the business network was launched, they had only one business reporter and two senior business correspondents,” she said. “I’ve gotten to do so many different jobs, use different muscles, so to speak. As the years have passed I’ve discovered other talents I may have and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”

There’s a new show in town. McDowell and Sean Duffy will co-host The Bottom Line which will air on weeknights from 6-7:00 PM ET.

McDowell said she and Duffy come from extremely similar backgrounds. Duffy is from rural Wisconsin and McDowell is from Virginia.

“We know what small-town living is like, “McDowell said. “I might live in New York City but where I grew up affects the way I view the world. I’m still grounded in my hometown. On the show, we look south and west with everything we cover. You have to think of your audience. Rather than talking about them, we talk with them. That’s our shared background and vision. Sean is extremely down to earth and generous.”

McDowell said the show is not financially based, but steeped in business.

She said Duffy’s experience as a former U.S. Congressman, he understands policy as well as financial matters.

“Every decision in America is born of policy,” she said. “On the show, we bring that to our show. Talk about the news of the day.”

This is different from anything McDowell has done in the past.

“It’s a two-anchor show in the evening,” she explained. “This is not taking place during market hours. We tie all the business happenings together from the day. Again, it’s not about Washington or New York. It’s about the people we grew up with. We talk to them. Build a relationship with them on the air. For me, this is not just sitting in front of a camera. I can run off at the mouth as well as anyone, hang in there with the filibuster.”

McDowell says she is blunt, but hopes she isn’t rude. During a recent interview for the new show she used the terms ‘pig potatoes’ and ‘chapped backsides.’

“Those are terms I just made up,” she said. “I make up a lot of phrases and don’t always know what they mean. I have an entire repertoire of those kinds of phrases.”

Duffy assumed they were southern phrases he had to learn from McDowell, but she assured him she’d never heard them anywhere else.

“I’m just making stuff up,” McDowell said. “You can’t curse. Can’t say BS. At least you shouldn’t say BS on television. You don’t want to say manure. You never want to say something that makes people wince or evokes a smell.”

Dealing with people directly and bluntly seems to come from her mother.

“My mother had grit,” McDowell said. “She was also very kind, never syrupy. I used to say she had no magnolia-mouth.

That’s got to be a southern phrase.

McDowell said her mother was not a servile flatterer, but she was kind. Always there when somebody was in need.

“She had real grit. She’d stand and fight for her friends and family members.”

Her mother passed away after being diagnosed with stage-four cancer.

“She went through unimaginable pain,” McDowell said of her mother. “For nearly six years. You want to talk about somebody who was tough. There was nobody more pugnacious than my mother.”

She explained even with her illness, her mother was always on the go. Continuing to live her life. When questioned about being so active while she was ill, her mother continued to show grit.

“My mother would say she didn’t want to walk around looking like she had cancer. She asked, ‘What choice do I have? I could lay in bed and wait to die, or I can get up and do what I can .’”

McDowell said her mother’s illness taught her to be a caregiver in ways she never could have imagined. Her mother taught her to find moments of joy every single day, in the smallest of things.

“It can be as simple as telling a stranger to have a great day. Treat a perfect stranger with kindness. I do it all day long. I know it sounds corny, but I want to be known as a person who brings a casserole to a friend when they’re ill.”

A one-sheet from Fox tells you McDowell and the culmination of her background is perfect for The Bottom Line. The fact is, it’s true.

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Airing The Tyre Nichols Video Was A Necessity

There were hard moments to watch in those videos, hard sounds to hear. But they aired.

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Far be it for me not to address this outrageous and embarrassing instance in humanity. After the videos of Memphis police brutally beating Tyre Nichols were shown on television there really seemed to be more outrage emerging from society this time than from the media, for a change. One would think that’s how we wish things to be.

In instances like this, where the video and audio images are far from brief but are instead chaptered as they unfold, there are few options other than to let them run their course. Clocks — breaks hard and soft — are out the window, just as in live coverage.

Because that’s what this was, only the live this time was us, and as we all absorbed and reacted to actions disapprovingly familiar yet somehow foreign at the same time, the impact was still becoming apparent even though we already knew the outcome.

It’s happened before.

Not always like this but we’ve seen it before, police encounters shown on the news overtakes and become the news.

It takes effect as the sights and sounds are digested, dissected, and discussed, often before their potential impact could really be imagined.

In 1991, when the Handycam footage crossed screens for the first time and we learned Rodney King’s name, we didn’t know then but we had a feeling.

We were on the right track, though as newsrooms evolved and street reporting incorporated a different type of storytelling.

I was a cop in 1991. Changes came. Some.

It’s 2023, I’m no longer a cop. Changes will come again. Some.

Turning points — or the overused watershed moments — mean just as much to the news media as they do to law enforcement.

The “why’s” that make this a turning point are more society and community based this time around than they were in 1991.

At least I think so. And I don’t think it makes a bit of difference who’s involved this time.

There were hard moments to watch in those videos, and hard sounds to hear. But they aired. Where they couldn’t air, they were described in great detail; descriptions sometimes can be worse than the real thing. Sometimes, not this time.

And they should air, they shouldn’t stop airing. This is what happened and this is what people need to see and hear and this is exactly why we are here.

Warn them, provide them with a heads up that they’re not going to like what happens next. It’s life and we show life, and we show what some of us do with it when it’s someone else’s.

Overall, I would say the news platforms held their composure, even after the videos were released. I saw, read, and heard some refreshingly neutral coverage, even from outlets where I expected hard turns into the lanes on either side of the road.

Legitimate questions were asked by anchors and reporters and much of the time, the off-balance issues were raised more by those on the sidewalks and those on the other side of the cameras and microphones.

As much as I find myself in disagreement with what I often see on the cable networks — all the cable networks — I did find a sense of symmetry watching CNN’s Don Lemon speak with Memphis City Council Chair Martavius Jones in the hours after the videos were released.

Regular protocols be damned, Lemon and producers lingered patiently as Jones, visibly overcome by emotion, struggled to regain breath and composure enough to be able to speak. Rather than cut away or move to other elements, they stood fast and it became an example of what often requires no words.

There were fewer punches pulled on other platforms as well.

The sounds of the screams, the impacts, and the hate-filled commands were broadcast through car radios.

As were Tyre Nichol’s calls for his mom. They aired. They had to.

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Does the Republican Establishment Get It?

For many it seemed that the Republican establishment stood idly by as Democrats changed the rules and worked behind the scenes to alter elections.

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In a move that seemed to go against the wishes of the patriotic American grassroots, the Republican party on Friday re-elected RNC Chairperson Ronna McDaniel. 

The media immediately took notice, as many on television and radio are now wondering why the party would re-elect a chairperson who has been so unpopular with the base of its party. 

Grant Stinchfield discussed this issue Friday night on his program, Stinchfield Tonight, which airs on Real America’s Voice network.

“Ronna McDaniel holds on to her chairmanship of the Republican Party. By a whopping total of — what were the numbers– 111 to 54. Harmeet Dhillon only received 54 votes. Mike Lindell 4 votes. This is proof to me that the Republican establishment is dug in,” Stinchfield — formerly of Newsmax — said. “Don’t tell me they’re out of touch. See, you tell me they’re out of touch, that implies ignorance. They’re not ignorant about anything.”

As sentiment for Dhillon grew in the days leading up to Friday’s vote, many influential politicians and party donors publicly offered her their support and endorsement. These included Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), as well as donors Mike Rydin, Dick Uihlein, and Bernie Marcus.

Also on board were musician and outspoken conservative John Rich, along with the state GOP of Nebraska and Washington State. Countless journalists and media personalities, such as Charlie Kirk, Miranda Divine, and Lou Dobbs, also came out publicly in support of Dhillon. Former President Donald Trump remained neutral, not making a public choice of either of the three candidates.

For many of Dhillon’s supporters, the deciding factor was public sentiment across the party’s base.

“They’re reading the same chat boards. They’re getting the same emails I’m reading. I will literally post something about this race when I was supporting Harmeet Dhillon. There was not one comment – not one – that supported Ronna McDaniel. Everyone wanted change,” Stinchfield said, noting that the party elite saw the same groundswell of support for change.

“Now, nobody has an issue as Ronna McDaniel is some evil kind of person. I don’t believe she is. I believe, though, that she is part of the establishment. She’s been around too long as far as the establishment goes. And she’s been ingrained in doing business as usual. It’s not working.”

In making their choices known, many Dhillon supporters simply pointed to the scoreboard during McDaniel’s reign.

“Think about where we are. 2018, we lost the House. 2020, we lost everything. 2022, we won the House, but we should have really steamrolled the House and we should have taken back the Senate, which we didn’t do,” Stinchfield said. “That means we’re on a real losing track since she took over. I don’t like being on a losing track. I like being on a winning track.

“Something has got to change when you talk about all of this. So how does Ronna McDaniel get 111 votes and Harmeet Dhillon only get 54 votes, when everyone, every Republican voter I talk to said it was time for change?” pondered Stinchfield.

And even more than the losses, for many it seemed that the Republican establishment stood idly by as Democrats changed the rules and worked behind the scenes to alter elections. The most recent example of which came in Arizona, where presumptive gubernatorial favorite, Kari Lake, was “defeated” when countless voting irregularities occurred in some of the state’s most deep-red areas.

“Under her watch, Democrats instituted a mail-in ballot scheme. That may be even worse than losing, when you talk about the House and the Senate and all these things. The fact that we now have a junk mail-in ballot scheme across the country under Ronna McDaniel’s watch is serious trouble. Very serious trouble,” Stinchfield said on Friday. “And so the reason it is is because the Democrats are rigging the system.”

For years – until Donald Trump descended the golden escalator and took the world by storm – the Republican party had the reputation of being the party of the rich. Rush Limbaugh used to refer to this wing of Republicans as “the country club crowd.” President Donald Trump flipped the narrative completely, offering a clear vision of hope and patriotism to working-class America.

Reputable polling — such as Richard Baris’ Big Data Poll — consistently showed Trump running well ahead of almost every Republican candidate during the 2022 mid-term election cycle. In other words, Trump still maintains considerably more support across the country than most of the individual Senate or House candidates experienced.

Many experts believe this is because voters still view Trump as an outsider, while they view the Republican party much less favorably.

“Let’s tell you how out of touch they are, how elitist they are,” Stinchfield said, calling out the GOP establishment. “This meeting that went on, do you know where it is? It’s at the Waldorf Astoria Monarch in California. One of the most expensive resorts in America. You’re lucky if you get a room for a thousand dollars a night down there on Dana Point. Now, it’s a beautiful hotel, but why is the Republican Party holding an event there? Then I went back and I looked at what RedState did. RedState went back and looked at some of the expenses that the Republican Party under Ronna McDaniel’s leadership was spending money on.

“Take a look at this. $3.1 million on private jets. $1.3 million on limousine and chauffeur services. $17.1 million on donor mementos. $750,000 on floral arrangements. Now you compare this to the Democrats. The Democrats spent $35,000 on private airfare. A thousand dollars on floral arrangements. A thousand. Not $750,000. A thousand. And the $17.1 million they spent on donor mementos, the Democrats spent $1.5 million.

“Democrats know where to put the money. It’s not giving donors gifts. Donors shouldn’t want gifts. If you give money, give money. You don’t need the fancy pin to put on your lapel.”

Following her loss, Dhillon warned her party that it must listen to the base, saying, “if we ignore this message, I think it’s at our peril. It’s at our peril personally, as party leaders and it’s at our peril for our party in general.”

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