Mr. Versatility: award winning reporter, media critic, historian, radio announcer, and music reviewer.
In the world of print journalism, nobody was more versatile than Bill Buchanan. An award-winning police reporter covering major events including the Brinks Robbery, he also loved music, so he began doing a big band jazz show on WVDA radio in 1953.
Bill Buchanan was born in Boston and grew up in Milton. He was a senior at Milton High School when the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire set him on the road to becoming a reporter. He graduated from Northeastern University and working for the Boston Herald and the Boston Evening Traveler as a police reporter, covering numerous major stories including the famous Brink’s Robbery in 1950.
Buchanan became the Radio/TV editor for the Boston Daily Record and later the assistant city editor of The Boston Globe, where ha also wrote reviews of the newest jazz LP’s.
In 1953 WNAC radio moved from 1260AM to 680AM and was replaced on 1260 by WVDA for four years. Bill Buchanan began his broadcasting career doing a Big Band jazz show on the new WVDA. When the station changed again to WEZE in 1957 he moved to WILD and later to WBZ interviewing music and entertainment celebrities.
With an encyclopedic knowledge of Boston history, he continued to report about the changing city until he retired in the 1990s, a career that spanned five decades. Buchanan died in 2015 at the age of 90.
MASSACHUSETTS BROADCASTERS ASSOCIATION
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