For Love of the Breaking Story

In a neatly ordered hangar at Whiteman Airport, John Marshall sits on a posh black leather sofa surrounded by the things he loves: a marine blue Porsche Carrera, a Great Lakes biplane with red, white and blue stripes and a poster of his wife, actress Joan Van Ark.

He stares at an ancient PC while working on his newest love, a Web site he created called eNewswires.com.

The site is a paradise for news junkies. A cyber surfer can find links to newspapers, magazines, news services and other information sources, including stock market results, sports results, weather--and a lot more.

“No gossip. No gore. No garbage,” the site says, then adds, in seeming contradiction, “Not unless you want them.” According to Marshall, he just puts the links there and it’s up to the user to decide where to go.

“I want to enable people to form their own opinion. So there is no editorial opinion from me. You decide what you want and then form your own opinion,” he said.

A former newsman with close-cropped graying blond hair and a reporter’s steely-edged voice, Marshall’s contract at KNBC-TV Channel 4 was not renewed in 1992. His Web site is a link to a world where he went from being a top player to a sidelined spectator.

“My intentions here are not to necessarily make money, but to redeem myself,” he said.

Marshall explained further: “When I was a kid in my 20s at KNBC, I used to go into the wire room and read the AP and UPI news wires and suddenly I am finding myself in touch with a world far beyond the freeway accidents and brush fires of Los Angeles. It was fascinating. So today, it may seem that maybe I’m on the sidelines, but I’m deeply involved.”

“I have moved forward and I love it. I love being part of the news scene and the new medium.”

Recently, as Hurricane Floyd moved into Florida, Marshall posted links from his Web site to the Web sites he thought would give the best storm coverage.

So far, the response hasn’t been overwhelming--under 6,000 hits since the site began in June, a far cry from the million or more viewers he could reach daily as a TV news reporter in L.A. But Marshall said he still gets a strong sense of satisfaction in bringing people the news.

“I get up at 4 o’clock in the morning, because I know that people on the East Coast want to know what’s happening in the world. And that’s fun,” he said.

Is it as much fun as being a working newsman?

“I have never compared the two jobs,” he said. “I don’t think I want to go back. I’m not sure that I can. I wouldn’t fit in, and I’m proud of that.”

Marshall earned a string of awards as a local newsman, including being named Southern California Broadcaster of the Year in 1983. A column by The Times’ TV critic Howard Rosenberg on his ouster was headlined: “The Axing of the Best Reporter in Town.”

Marshall watches enough local news--with its emphasis on live shots, even if reporters on the scene barely know what they are talking about--to know that his style of reporting isn’t prized anymore.

“The television news business has changed,” he said. “They have people that are ‘news readers,’ and other reporters who show up at a scene so the station can say they were there. A lot of them have never had to dig for their stories. I was a reporter that could dig for his story. I’m proud of that.”

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Stunned at being let go, Marshall rebounded by taking his severance check and buying an airplane. He learned to fly in three months. After acquiring his instrument rating and a commercial pilot’s license, Marshall opened an airborne tour business from Whiteman Airport, taking curious folks up in his open-cockpit biplane.

“I did it for two years. It was wonderful to be able to share my joy of flying with others,” he said.

Occasionally he would get really adventurous riders who wanted to experience loops and rolls--passengers he was more than willing to accommodate.

“No one ever got out of the cockpit without a smile on their face,” he recalled.

He said the business was just taking off when his insurance carrier jacked up the rates. He shut down the company Dec. 31, 1998, but kept the plane. Week after week, he headed out to Whiteman. If he didn’t go flying, he would sit in the hangar watching TV and chatting with friends who dropped by.

One day, while trying to find news on the Internet and jumping from news site to news site, Marshall had an epiphany.

“Why not put together a Web page that would give you the news you wanted from any source you wanted, without the hype, the commercials and the car chases,” he recalled, thinking eventually it may even turn into a business.

“Can I make money with this? It’ll happen,” he said recently. “Not overnight, but it will happen. I am about to put my first advertising on the site. There is money to be made. But that is a secondary thing in my life. The important thing is to be close to the news and let people know what is happening in the world.”

And if he tires of that, there’s always the Porsche and the plane parked right beside him.