David R. Busse
Well-known member
Veteran ABC News Los Angeles Bureau cameraman Robert "Skip" Jennings, a fixture of the network's coverage for more than 30 years, died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Las Vegas today.
I had the pleasure of working with Skip on many assignments. He was the first west coast network cameraman I met on my first day on the job. I knew he looked familiar. That night, I looked in one of my college text books ("Television News" by Irving Fang) and realized he was pictured in that book doing a film interview with Peter Jennings (no relation) in Vietnam. The next day, I chided him for being so old that I'd seen him in a college text book of mine.
Skip was an Oklahoma native, as I recall, and got his start at the old WKY-TV there, with other notables like Houston Hall, Bob Dotson and (later) Darrell Barton. He went to Vietnam for the network in the late 1960s and turned that experience into a staff job with the ABC News Los Angeles Bureau. He retired several years ago but continued to freelance from his home in Las Vegas.
He was one of the "unforgettables" I have known in this business.
Here's more:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2865249
I had the pleasure of working with Skip on many assignments. He was the first west coast network cameraman I met on my first day on the job. I knew he looked familiar. That night, I looked in one of my college text books ("Television News" by Irving Fang) and realized he was pictured in that book doing a film interview with Peter Jennings (no relation) in Vietnam. The next day, I chided him for being so old that I'd seen him in a college text book of mine.
Skip was an Oklahoma native, as I recall, and got his start at the old WKY-TV there, with other notables like Houston Hall, Bob Dotson and (later) Darrell Barton. He went to Vietnam for the network in the late 1960s and turned that experience into a staff job with the ABC News Los Angeles Bureau. He retired several years ago but continued to freelance from his home in Las Vegas.
He was one of the "unforgettables" I have known in this business.
Here's more:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2865249
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