Mike Drew, who wrote 'tenaciously' about Milwaukee TV and radio for 43 years, dies at 90

When Mike Drew started writing about Milwaukee radio and television for The Milwaukee Journal, local viewers could only get six TV channels and about 20 radio stations.

But as Milwaukee's first full-time TV critic, Drew believed local broadcasting was an important subject, even if it had been covered in the past as fluff.

“He was emblematic of a time in which local television news was a beat, and he covered that beat tenaciously —about the people, about the content, about the quality," said Jill Geisler, who frequently interacted with Drew as a reporter and news director at WITI-TV (Channel 6) in Milwaukee from 1973 to 1998. "He held newsrooms accountable, whether they liked it or not. And he helped people feel connected to the people who brought them their daily news on television and radio.”

Drew died Aug. 10 at Aurora Zilber Family Hospice in Wauwatosa. He was 90. Four years earlier, he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Journalism ran in Mike Drew's family

Michael H. Drew was born in 1932 in Chicago. When he was 8, his father was killed and the family moved to Neenah. Drew graduated from Neenah High School, then went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in political science in 1953.

But journalism was in his DNA. His mother, Marion Drew, was a reporter and women's editor at the Wausau Record-Herald and a columnist and society writer at the Appleton Post-Crescent. At UW-Madison, Mike Drew worked on the Daily Cardinal as assistant sports editor, columnist and managing editor.

After stints as a reporter at the Wooster Daily Record and Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum, both in Ohio, he returned to Wisconsin in 1955, spending five years at the Post-Crescent as assistant sports editor.

He was hired as a copyreader at The Milwaukee Journal in 1961. Within months, Drew also was writing entertainment features and reviews, from covering a performance by jazz legend Louis Armstrong in Washington Park to a review of a 22-year-old grad student turned "swinging singer" named Al Jarreau.

In 1963, Drew was named assistant editor of The Journal's TV Screen section and began writing "Milwaukee Studio Notes," a weekly column on local TV and radio. While Drew continued reviewing theater and concerts (especially jazz), the column led to more stories taking readers inside Milwaukee broadcasting — not just who was who, but also how local TV and radio were changing, from the professionalization of weather forecasts to technological developments reshaping programming.

"He reported on what we led with, what we missed, who we hired, who we lost, and it really connected Milwaukee to its news in a way that people miss,” Geisler said.

Writing about, and tussling with, local TV stations

Unlike most of his predecessors, Drew wrote about people at radio and TV stations that weren't owned by his employer, The Journal Company, which at the time owned WTMJ-AM and its FM sister station as well as WTMJ-TV (Channel 4).

TV and radio stations not owned by The Journal Company often complained that the Journal stations had an unfair advantage in the newspaper's coverage.

“He was always defensive about that, because we were always challenging about (how) the Journal had the big advantage,” said Geisler, who left Channel 6 in 1998 to work for the nonprofit Poynter Institute, and today is the Bill Plante Chair in Leadership and Media Integrity at Loyola University in Chicago. “Like working the ref, we would always sort of hold his feet to the fire: 'If you’re going to criticize us, would you do the same thing to Channel 4?' ”

For example, in 1979, Channels 6 and 12 began leasing helicopters to help with news coverage; Channel 4 used them on a per-story basis. When Drew questioned, in print, TV stations' full-time need for a helicopter, Geisler said, "we invited him to come for a ride."

"And he brought his daughter along," Geisler said, laughing. "So there was a part of Mike that was always curious, always skeptical and then brought a human touch to things."

He also got a pretty good column out of the experience.

While Drew was not shy about giving his opinions, he also wasn't shy about sharing readers' opinions of his opinions. In 1980, after Drew had written that Milwaukee native Tom Snyder's expanded "Tomorrow" show on NBC had left local audiences "generally underwhelmed," the TV host called him up to complain:

"Mike, this is Tom Snyder, and I'm mad."

Drew turned their conversation into a column, giving Snyder equal time. (But Drew still got the last word.)

In 1976, Drew's column morphed from Sundays only to five times a week, a reflection of the increased interest in the behind-the-scenes of local TV and radio.

"I took this job because I considered the broadcast beat the most exciting on the paper, and I still do," Drew wrote in a 1984 column.

Drew's daughter Polly, a marriage and family therapist who wrote a column for the Journal Sentinel from 1996 to 2012, said she always admired her father's ability to interview famous entertainers in a way that showed his subjects' humanity.

"Watching him backstage and interviewing people who were very, very well known and being very, very curious about their lives and being so disarming with the way his interview style — very folksy and really connecting with people — really helped me as a marriage and family therapist, and certainly as a columnist as well," she said.

(About Polly's column: She admitted that before she filed, she had her father do the editing. "He was the best editor in the world. There was no way I could have done what I did without him.")

Jazz was another of Mike Drew's passions

But he also took every opportunity he could to write about another passion: jazz.

Drew's love of jazz went back to his childhood, according to his second wife, Alice Hanson-Drew. (The couple married in 1993; Drew and his first wife, Joan Deland Drew, divorced after 33 years of marriage.)

“He used to hide under the covers when he was a boy, listening to Dave Garroway," Alice said, referring to the influential late-night Chicago jazz DJ who went on to become the first host of NBC's "Today" show. "His mother would come in, ‘Isn’t that light off yet?’ He’d listen to Dave Garroway till midnight.”

Drew brought his love of jazz home often. Polly Drew remembered parties her parents threw that turned into jam sessions — with her father on bongos.

“Jazz musicians in the Milwaukee area would come over, and somebody would play piano and somebody would sing,” she said. Among the party-crashing performers, she recalled — singing legend Peggy Lee.

In 1994, The Journal, which had already added a radio column, expanded its TV coverage by adding a second full-time TV critic, Joanne Weintraub, and a daily TV-radio news columnist, Tim Cuprisin. Drew continued to write his column several days a week.

When The Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel merged in 1995, Drew cut back to one column a week.

"He really felt it was time to move on," Polly said.

It was a slow exit. Drew continued to write the column nearly every week until he retired from the Journal Sentinel in 2006. In his farewell column, he assessed the broadcast landscape and found it lacking, the victim of an industry chasing demographics that weren't tuning in anyway and a corporate environment that valued sensation over substance.

And, he added, it wasn't just the TV industry's fault: "With our fruit-fly attention spans and addiction to amusement, we get the television and radio we deserve," Drew wrote.

He continued writing, contributing jazz reviews and other pieces to the Journal Sentinel and Milwaukee Magazine, among other publications.

Drew, who had won several awards from the Milwaukee Press Club, was elected to the Press Club's Hall of Fame in 2010.

He also spent a lot of time with another of his passions, sailing. Drew was a founding member of the Milwaukee Community Sailing Center, where he was a volunteer instructor and served on the center's board for decades.

In addition, Drew volunteered at Riverside University High School, where he served as an adviser to the school paper, and at the Urban Ecology Center and the United Methodist Children's Services food pantry.

Until the end, his daughter Polly said, Mike Drew was able to recognize friends and family, and still made use of his interviewing skills — but had trouble retaining information. A couple of weeks before he died, she said, her father edited her mother-of-the-bride speech — and did a pretty good job of it.

In addition to daughter Polly and second wife Alice, Drew is survived by his daughter Pamela, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

A private service for family and friends is being planned for this fall.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Longtime Milwaukee TV/radio columnist Mike Drew dies at 90