Pete Noyes
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Pete Noyes Obituary
Died Feb. 1, 2021
(Story in part from City News Service)
Pete Noyes, named an Honorary PPAGLA member in November, 2016, died February 1, 2021 at age 90 according to his son Jack, a long-time assignment editor at NBC4.
Pete was a Los Angeles television news pioneer who became an award-
winning news producer and investigative journalist. He was also a mentor to many colleagues and students who took his broadcast newswriting classes at USC and Cal State Northridge.
Noyes began his journalism career at Stars and Stripes, the American military newspaper, while serving in the Army during the Korean War. During his decades-long career, he worked at KFMB in San Diego, KOVR in Sacramento, and in Los Angeles at City News Service, KNXT/KCBS, KNBC, KABC-TV, KTTB and KCOP, along with the Fox network newsmagazine “Front Page.” He mentioned that he might have been fired from more stations than any other journalist!
Along the way, Noyes was honored with TV’s highest award, the Peabody, 10 Emmys, two Edward R. Murrow awards and many Golden Mike Awards. He taught his craft at the USC and Cal State Northridge journalism schools and penned several books, including “Legacy of Doubt,” which linked organized crime to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
After retiring from the news business in 2008, he published several other books, including “The Real L.A. confidential,” in which he wrote about some of L.A.’s most notorious crimes, including the Manson family and O.J. Simpson murder cases.
His 2015 book “Who Killed the Big News?” tells the story of KNXT’s introduction in 1961 – and ultimate death of – “The Big News,” which was billed as the first 45-minute newscast in the nation and launched the careers of the late Jerry Dunphy and Ralph Story, among others.
Noyes notched many scoops as the show’s city editor and was named the producer of the newscast in 1963 as it expanded to an hour as the lead-in to a 30-minute edition of ”The CBS Evening News,” featuring a new anchorman named Walter Cronkite.
Videographer and PPAGLA member George Zanuzoski, who worked for several years with Pete at KNBC said Pete was a great producer, a good boss, and a dear friend. They covered a political convention in New York in 1980 as well as many stories in California. George said that regardless of his title, Pete did everything. He was the go-to man – the glue that held the organization together. He would raise his voice, but always with respect, and George remembers a time when, after a long lunch, Pete threw a typewriter across a room. Pete led newsrooms that could be rowdy, but fun. It was quiet, and dull when Pete left the room.
Longtime USC journalism professor Joe Salzman met Noyes in 1964 when both worked for Channel 2.
“He was a tough, hard-bitten newspaper reporter who, like the rest of us didn’t know what to make of this new concept: television news,” Saltzman recalled in a Facebook post. “He had come from City News Service and took no prisoners. I can still remember him shouting out my name when he was reading a piece of my copy and yelling, ‘What the hell is this?’
“He’d sit me down and show me what I should have done with the news story, and I learned more from him than five years of undergraduate and graduate journalism school about how to tell a story in a minute and a half.”
Saltzman added: “You always knew when Pete was working on deadline because his white shirt was always half out of his pants as he scrambled about the newsroom barking orders. He was every journalist I had ever seen in the movies and on television, and the rumor that he was the model for Lou Grant in ‘The Mary Tyler Moor Show’ was, at least for me, as true as it could be. And Pete said it was so.
In addition to his wife, Grace, son Jack, daughter-in-law Linda and two granddaughters, survivors include his sister, Liz Gorsich, and brothers Frank and David.
Funeral services will be private, but his sister hopes to hold a “celebration of life” via Zoom.
In lieu of flowers, Gorsich suggested that contributions be made in Noyes’ name to the 8-Ball Emergency Fund for Journalists, formerly known as the 8-Ball Welfare Foundation. Noyes was a long time board member of the Foundation, which provided emergency financial grants to journalists in need and promising journalism students.
https://www.8ballfoundation.com