Ideastream’s Rick Jackson, Prominent Voice in Cleveland Media for 20 Years, Will Retire in June

In Rick Jackson’s 45 odd years in TV and broadcast journalism, his voice — buttery lilt reminiscent of Brokaw-era broadcasters — has brought news both local and national to listeners.

Jackson has helped contextualize gubernatorial debates and led City Club talks. He’s provided updates on murder trials in Mississippi and interviewed a half dozen Presidents. He’s covered three national political conventions and taped explainers for Cleveland middle schoolers.

But come June 2, after some 20,000 interviews and 20 years as an Ideastream journalist, Jackson plans to retire, at 67, from the industry.

“It’s just time,” Jackson said sitting in a green room at Ideastream. “There’s no real magic to that number. But a lot of people seem to have left Ideastream at 67 over the past few years.” (David C. Barnett, a senior reporter, left last year at Jackson’s age.)

Defined by many of his colleagues as a generalist, Jackson seemed to thrive off his adaptability, especially when he returned to Cleveland in 1999. Although Jackson had cut his teeth in his twenties and thirties working at TV stations in six different states, it was the second half of his career, at WOIO or Ideastream, where he seemed to settle smoothly into his jack-of-all-trades work.

And it’s served Jackson well. Along with his six Emmy wins, Jackson’s work has garnered him Best Anchor honors from the Associated Press, two wins from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists and an induction into the Ohio Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2001.

Late last year, after a “blood-related” health scare that put Jackson out of commission for five months, he was inducted into the Press Club of Cleveland’s Journalism Hall of Fame.

A voracious reader in Mr.  Rogers-era Pittsburgh, Jackson grew up influenced by his teacher mother’s knack for language and his construction worker father’s love of work. (He went to middle with Fred Roger’s son, James.) He took his interest in storytelling to Bethany College around 1975, where he became the school station’s first news director, working alongside future luminaries like NBC Today‘s  Faith Daniels, CNN’s Toria Tolley and Dave Sims, the future play-by-play commentator for the Seattle Mariners.

After graduating in 1978, Jackson entered what would be 20 years of station-hopping. He worked radio at WKEE in Huntington, WV, then Wheeling, where he met his now wife of 41 years, Brenda Cain. (Cain is a reporter for the Plain Dealer.) After two and a half years in West Virginian television, he and Cain relocated to Memphis—Jackson’s “first big market”—where, as a Black reporter in the South, he experienced racism first hand in ways he hadn’t before.

Especially when he crossed the border into Mississippi.

“In the 1980s, it was very frightening,” he recalled. “If I was doing a story [in Mississippi], I had to have a white photographer with me. Or if we were sending a Black photographer, he’d be with a white reporter. I mean, it was an unwritten rule. We just did not send two people into that part of our coverage.”

The decade ahead saw local networks scrambling to hire the same Black talent that larger networks, like ones in New York and Los Angeles, had. The same, Jackson said, was brewing in Cleveland, where, in 1983, Leon Bibb, Al Roker and Noah Nelson were developing chops at NBC-owned WKYC.

Jackson was brought in to the former station that year as a general broadcaster. He was only 26, NBC’s youngest person on air in 1983.

“It was interesting because at that time, I think there was awakening in the industry that there were not enough African Americans on TV,” Jackson said. “So to be a young, experienced African American reporter—it meant something.”

After stints at a startup NBC affiliate in Charlotte, NC, and working briefly at ABC, Jackson got a call from WOIO in Cleveland. He had alway respected the city’s love of news, and its culture of light worship of the newsman. He turned down jobs in Atlanta and elsewhere. “WOIO called,” he said, “and I said, ‘Let’s go home to Cleveland.'”

In 2003, Jackson joined Ideastream, a byproduct of the merger between WVIZ and WCPN. His voice soon became a mainstay on a TV show called Village America, a nationally syndicated public affairs series, then at Morning Edition, then Sound of Ideas. In 2005, he began lending a hand at News Depth, the daily digest for middle schoolers, a program running today that still seems inseparable from Jackson’s egoless journalism.

Mark Rosenberger, chief content officer at Ideastream who’s worked with Jackson his entire tenure in the Idea Center in Playhouse Square, said his colleague’s humility and innate talent were what gave Jackson his Swiss Army-knife reputation.

“It’s not only his skill level, but just it’s kind of both his aptitude and his attitude,” Rosenberger told Scene. “I mean, the guy is just unflappable and always kind and generous. I’ve never honestly seen him ever lose his cool. I never have. I’ve asked him, and he says, ‘It’s how I’m stitched together, man. This is who I am.'”

On a quiet Thursday morning, Jackson walks around Ideastream’s second story office space in a canary yellow shirt and a black facemask. (Doctors told him his immune system is still recovering.) Seeing Jackson stride and talk shop with fellow producers and reporters, those he’ll say goodbye to soon, is when one sees how blurred the line between the on-air performer and the reliable colleague is.

“Rick is just great,” Rachel Rood, a supervising producer, said. “He’s not a diva. He’s a total team player. When you work for other stations, you run into egos. But with Rick? It’s different.”

But will Jackson ever return to storytelling? Will his travels lead to—as colleagues predicted—a podcast series? Will he write a book, or even a documentary, about his career in TV or radio?

“There’s a pleasure in being a general assignment reporter because I could dip my fingers into anything. I mean, I’m just as comfortable reporting at NASA as I am reporting in Glenville or Twinsburg,” Jackson said. “I pride myself on being able to fit in, understand and comprehend everything about this region.”

Jackson rested his hands on his lap in the green room. He smiled as a wave of nostalgia came over him.

“Man,” he said. “You’re making me think I’m going to miss this.”

Coming soon: Cleveland Scene Daily newsletter. We’ll send you a handful of interesting Cleveland stories every morning. Subscribe now to not miss a thing.

Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

This article appears in Apr 5-19, 2023.