Wave Wire Services
SOUTH LOS ANGELES — A funeral service was held Oct. 12 at First AME Church for veteran journalist Warren G. Wilson, a groundbreaking news reporter who spent more than 40 years as a broadcast journalist, including 21 years at KTLA. Wilson was one of the first Black broadcasters in Los Angeles when he started in the market in the 1960s.
Wilson died Sept. 27 at the age of 90, his son, Stanley Wilson, said in a statement.
His demeanor on the air as an iconic television journalist was just as authentic as he was a father — unsensational, sincere, a voice calming and eloquent,” the son wrote.
Wilson’s career as a reporter began at City News Service in 1959 when he was hired by Joseph M. Quinn, the father of current board Chairman Tom Quinn.
In 1963, Wilson joined United Press International in the Los Angeles bureau. During the Watts riots of 1965, Wilson was among only a few Black reporters in the midst of the rioting.
At UPI, his stories often reflected witness accounts of law-abiding Black residents subjected to beatings, arrests and detentions without probable cause. When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Los Angeles to help calm racial tension and unrest, Wilson was the sole Black reporter assigned to cover his arrival.
Throughout his four-decade career, Wilson covered every major news story in Southern California, five mayors, and eight presidential elections, including John F. Kennedy’s acceptance speech at the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. In 1973, he followed the mayoral campaign of Tom Bradley and reported on Bradley’s inauguration as the first Black mayor of Los Angeles.
Wilson stood directly behind Sen. Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, as Kennedy delivered his acceptance speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California primary. As the senator was being escorted from the podium to conduct a KFWB radio interview with Wilson, Kennedy’s bodyguard, NFL legend Rosie Grier, a friend of Wilson, asked him to allow security to clear Kennedy through the hotel kitchen pantry and meet in a designated media room.
Seconds later, shots rang out and Kennedy fell to the ground mortally wounded. Wilson, shown in KTLA news archival film jumping from the podium to get on the air, would spend the next 48 hours reporting live on the aftermath of the assassination.
When television networks and local stations began to racially integrate newsrooms in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Wilson was hired at KNBC Channel 4, becoming the first Black staff reporter there.
He earned 15 Emmy Award nominations, most notably for his coverage of the Hillside Strangler serial killer. In 1979, he was honored with his first Emmy trophy for his investigative report “Children of the Night,” about a shelter and treatment center for juvenile prostitutes.
Because of the deep trust he established in the Black community, he was often called on to serve as an intermediary in arranging the surrender of 22 people wanted by law enforcement.
During his years at KNBC, Wilson entered law school and earned a degree from the University of West Los Angeles School of Law. He received an undergraduate degree in political science from Cal State Los Angeles and an associate’s degree from East Los Angeles College.
Throughout his career, Wilson received six L.A.-area Emmys and commendations from various community organizations, including the California Legislature, ACLU, L.A. County Board of Supervisors and the Los Angeles City Council.
As Stanley Wilson reported, his father’s interviews with late Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates were often contentious, but Wilson and Gates developed a mutual respect and maintained a dialogue well into their retirements. As police chief, Gates presented Wilson with LAPD’s “Best, Most Responsible Reporter in Southern California” award.
In 2000, the Society of Professional Journalists awarded Wilson the Broadcast Journalist of the Year award. In 2002, Wilson received the Los Angeles Press Club’s highest honor, a Joseph M. Quinn Award for lifetime achievement of Journalistic Excellence Distinction.
“Joe Quinn was a mentor to me,” Wilson told the Press Club before receiving the honor. “Forty-three years ago, Quinn took a chance on a young vet and said, ‘This young fellow might make a journalist yet.’”
Tom Quinn, the current City News Service chairman, wrote in a Facebook post following Wilson’s death, “I was a very green 14-year-old copyboy at City News Service when I first met Warren Wilson, who was a reporter at CNS. … It was all so long ago, but I vividly remember his effort to teach me — about journalism and more importantly about the people and places of my hometown. He was a wonderful, kind and gentle man. And a terrific reporter.”
Wilson is survived by six children. His second eldest daughter, Kim T. Wilson, died in 2003.
