Video (Click titles to view): Discovering Radio - As a college freshman, Tillman Irving joins the college radio station. Running Time 2:54 Community News Service - Tillman Irving learns about a radio reporting opportunity from Ed Bradley. Running Time 3:06 Links: QuickTime required to view videos » Click here to download QuickTime

Jane Tillman Irving

Got her break in the late 60s working for the school paper at New York City College

She had gotten wind of a fire set in the student lounge, the same building her newspaper offices were located. That same week, black students had taken over the administration building and it was believed the two were related. She rushed down to building but security had cordon off the area.

"My newspaper is in that building and I have to get on campus," she told the security guard. A voice boomed behind her, "That's the wrong answer. You should have said you were with me." The voice was that of Ed Bradley who was working for CBS radio at the time. They talked journalism that day and he directed her to Community News Service, a news agency started out of the Kerner Commission report lambasting news organization for their paltry coverage of African Americans.

She worked at Community News Service covering Harlem and the East Side that year. She also shadowed Ed Bradley taking his many criticism of her work to heart. Radio seemed to be her calling and when she heard of a part-time opening at WWRL, a black oriented station, she took it. She stayed there two years, working on a 5-minute newscast that ran 40 past the hour. The work was excellent training. She learned to write sharp, descriptive and short. The discipline of the clock taught her speed and reading copy cold.

Word of a strike led her to inquire at WCBS about possible jobs. She got a job there as an action reporter, responding to audience complaints of consumer problems with public and private agencies. The work involved little if no reporting and soon Tillman Irving grew restless to get back to news. A year into it she got another break. The son of a prominent New Yorker was kidnapped. The news director assigned her to the story. She was truly in her element.

"Here I was with the big boys," she recalls. "I felt so good. It was a defining moment."

Tillman Irving was born and raised in Manhattan. Her mother and physician father divorced early in her age. Yet her mother raised her in the hand of privilege, exposing her to New York's finest culture in theater, dance and opera. She took ballet lessons and went to the exclusive prep school Hunter College High School for girls. She was enrolled in the gifted program, traveled to Ecuador and Spain to study Spanish, and attended Jack and Jill parties with her friends who were members.

Her discovery of news and reporting at City College didn't stop with newspapers. She also developed a strong interest in radio. She worked on the news broadcast and in other areas as a disc jockey and announcer. She graduated from City College in 1969.

Tillman Irving won a reputation for being a smart reporter who spoke eloquently. When police shot a grandmother dead, she responded by covering the shooting critically but objectively. Eleanor Bumpers was a large, elderly woman who police claimed threatened them.

"It resonated as the Abner Louima case has done recently with black people in the city," she says. "Because it said that the police department thinks you are worthless, useless and your life is worth noting. There were so many stories like that that I covered where I had to say what I had to say but maintain that professional distance."

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