Paul Harvey was America’s most loved radio newscaster. His broadcast graced the airwaves for seven decades and touched the lives of millions of people. He was credited with creating the foundations for the modern newscast and awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush in 2005, the highest honor that can be awarded to a civilian by the United States of America. None of these things was a small accomplishment.
Mr Harvey passed away yesterday, February 28, 2009 at the age of 90. The voice that reached into 24 million homes and businesses each day has been silenced. To say that he will be missed is an understatement. He will be mourned by a nation in ways that few people ever are. He wasn’t a national hero or a figurehead. He was not someone whom we glimpsed on a screen and admired. He was a friend and family member, warmly welcomed into our homes each and every day. Mr. Harvey’s passing is a personal loss on a national scale.
Paul Harvey has left us a legacy as sales people and advertisers. Over the decades that he spent on radio, Mr. Harvey garnered relationships with manufacturers and service providers that he advertised in some cases for decades. He was quoted as saying that he was “…fiercely loyal to those who put their money where their mouth is”. To think that he wasn’t approached by every company that could afford advertising time on his broadcast would be foolish. They clamored after him. He could have easily earned millions of dollars acting as a shill for any number of products and the American public would have listened. He never did so.
Paul Harvey never advertised a product on his broadcast that he did not use himself and trust enough to recommend to his dearest friend. His integrity was such that it appears on every biographical page and wiki mention of his name. He was known as much for his ethics as he was for his commentary. America Trusted Paul Harvey and he in turn took it upon himself to be worthy of that trust, even though it could have benefited him greatly had he done otherwise.
To anyone willing to pay attention, the way Paul Harvey approached business has several valuable lessons to teach:
- Never sell something you don’t believe in.
- Treat your customer the same way you would treat your friends and family.
- Don’t look at the money you can earn over value to your customer.
- Never steer your customer wrong, they are trusting you to give them accurate information and to lead them to a solution to their problem however small it may be. That trust is a sacred thing and should not be violated.
- If you can’t give the customer what they want, refer them to someone who can.
- It is better to lose a sale today than to lose a customer or reader forever.
In today’s hectic and competitive business world it is sometimes easy to overlook these lessons. In the Internet game it’s most often the most aggressive or most willing to compromise values that win big today. They flash on the scene stomp on the competition, promise the moon and make the sale, but where will these people be tomorrow?
The Internet has a long memory. Unethical companies quickly find that word of mouth on the Internet is just as effective as word of mouth in a small town in rural America. People that don’t like the way they have been treated will tell other people about their bad experience. That word will spread quickly.
In the past they would tell their friends over coffee or at the grocery store. Today they will tell them on social networking sites like twitter, where a single comment in 140 characters or less can reach a million people within a few hours. If the word is positive, you stand to gain more customers. If the word is bad, you stand to lose the trust of a very large number of people before you ever had the chance to earn it.
Paul Harvey never lost sight of these things and neither should we. His business practices are worth their weight in gold and can be proven easily. Mr. Harvey broadcast for seven decades. In that time period many other broadcasters rose to high stature and then for some reason lost the trust of their listeners. Their careers ended there, usually after only a few years. Paul Harvey’s career on the other hand, never faltered. He worked his entire career to keep that trust, and you should be doing the same.
In closing, I wish to send my best wishes to the survivors of Paul Harvey. In particular I would like to say to Paul Harvey Jr. that your father was a man to be admired. I’m sure that you were proud of him and I am truly sorry for your loss.
As for me, I’ll carry the torch for ethical business practices and I hope and pray that others will rally to carry it with me. It’s a legacy worth living up to and something that is not nearly evident enough in Internet advertising today.
Good Day, Mr Harvey. You will be missed.
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Excellent post. I know that when I found out about Paul Harvey’s passing via twitter and I told my wife she immediately teared up. Paul Harvey was so welcome to listen to and his stories were wonderful. I never really took notice that he was advertising because he was just telling you about things he used and was familiar with. He will truly be missed.
Paul Harvey was an icon for his folksy, cutesy, delivery, his longevity, and his unusual style, but the fact is, that as a NEWSMAN he was mediocre, spinning yarn after yarn based on imagination more than fact, far too often fueled by his ultra conservative political beliefs.
I used to listen to Harvey many years ago, primarily his features, such as “The Rest of the Story”. I would never consider listening to him deliver a “newscast” if I wanted to hear any true facts.
This article, http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1394 from a decade ago, gives many detailed examples of Harvey’s distorted reporting, and how he all too frequently tailored the news to sometimes entertain, but usually to support his political and social viewpoints.
As an American character, he should be missed. As a reporter, well, the rest of the story is that he was an exceptional example of what a true journalist is not.
Ben,
Paul Harvey was definitely something special. I always noticed the ads, mostly because they very rarely changed.
theHoundDawg,
First of all, I was addressing Mr. Harvey’s business ethics, not his political views. As an ethical advertiser I think Paul Harvey has much to teach the modern world.
As for your thoughts on his newsworthiness, I must disagree with your choice of sources. I think that the site in question is biased, and I will stake that opinion on their most recent article on Mr. Harvey. http://www.fair.org/blog/#post-6563.
If you believe that Mr. Harvey was suggesting we should have employed the use of nuclear weaponry, then you are, in my opinion, sadly mistaken. Mr. Harvey was correct. We are now a more civilized nation, and we acted as such.
And before you rebut and mention our troops… Please remember that the President is responsible for the actions of the military. We who have worn a uniform follow orders from only one office.