It was the fall of 1982 and I was a clueless intern clipping newspapers at WSMV-TV in Nashville, Tennessee. I feel compelled to share with you a little bit about him because Mike defies the popular notion of the “godless media.” I’ve grown to regard this phrase as a canard perpetuated by people who haven’t spent much time around newsrooms.

Mike was tough, but he had heart and you could tell. There was a cartoon he proudly hung on the wall of his office, a portrait of him holding a chair and cracking a whip. But he encouraged and nurtured journalists who were among the most respected in the business, then and now. An award, a bust of Bobby Kennedy, sat in his office. I think it’s still in his office. The journalists that came out of Mike’s newsroom respected and defended justice, the natural world, poor people and sick people, a mission shared with most religious institutions.

Mike worked hard, almost too hard. He peered out into the hum and hubub of the newsroom from that glass walled office when the troops arrived in the morning. He was still in that office when most of the team left in the evening. Reporters and producers banged out scripts with large font Royal Manual typewriters on six ply script sets. Mike circled grammatical errors and returned the flawed page to the offender’s mailbox. He gave daily grades to staffers. He sat in the back of the control room wearing a headset and watched the bank of monitors over the producers’ shoulders during the critical 6pm newscast.

I really respect the guy. I happened into the staff meeting when Mike moved out of the newsroom to become General Manager. He got a standing ovation.

When Mike’s wife died after living several years with cancer, he felt called to a different vocation – Catholic Priest. He told his wife of this calling before she died. “Better the church than another woman,” he remembers her saying. I believe his decision to minister to others wasn’t a sudden reversal of Mike’s work in a TV newsroom, but a natural evolution of that work.

He went home, where his son lives, where his family lives, where his grandchild was born, home to New Orleans. He was there to minister to a hurting community after Hurricane Katrina.

Mike Kettenring probably wouldn’t remember me. There were many clueless interns and I did little to distinguish myself from the rest. But I remember him. I remember him any time I hear that phrase “godless media,” because it just isn’t true.

If you’d like to see and hear from Mike himself about his decision to become a priest, follow the link below.

http://www.newmorningtv.tv/todaysshow_031005.jsp

(Click on the little camera under “Spiritual Journey.”)