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Today, We Mourn A Great American George Donald Fitzpatrick, Jr

Services for George Donald Fitzpatrick, Jr. will be at 10 a.m. Friday, April 21, 2006, in Our Lady of Prompt Succor Catholic Church with Rev. Msgr. Ronald Hoppe and Rev. Dan O'Connor officiating. Interment will be in Greenwood Memorial Park, Pineville under the direction of John Kramer & Son. Don Fitzpatrick, Jr., 56, of Alexandria, died Monday, April 17, 2006, in his residence. He was born September 29, 1949 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A graduate of the University of Gonzaga, Spokane, Washington with a Masters in Communications. He entered the field of journalism and later the field of television. In March 24, 2001 he received a lifetime membership in the Radio and Television News Directors Association. He also received the John F. Hogan Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his contributions to the Journalism profession, April 18, 2005. Don was preceded in death by his father, George Donald Fitzpatrick and his mother, Patricia Regan Fitzpatrick; paternal grandparents, George Bernard Fitzpatrick and Elizabeth Anne Dressler Fitzpatrick and maternal grandparents John F. Regan and Rose Oldham Regan. Don Fitzpatrick, Jr, is survived by: his sisters, Erin Rhodes and her husband, John of Alexandria, LA; Betsy Belgard of Pineville, LA; his brother, Sean Fitzpatrick and wife Kim of Deville, LA and ten nieces and nephews. Friends are asked to call from 4 p.m. until 8 p.m. Thursday, April 20, 2006 and on Friday from 8:30 a.m. until 9:30 a.m. at John Kramer & Son. A Christian Wake service will be held at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in the funeral home. Pallbearers will be Mark Rosenthal, Thomas Swift, Freddy Revels, John Bowling, Michael Hall, and David Hall.

Don was a member of my extended family, a rare voice of reason in my family's discussion of politics, and a charming, intelligent spirit who challenged those around him to seriously think about their lives. I last met with him three months ago, and he was brilliant.

It never ceased to amaze me that people like Don lived and worked in our community.

From Broadcasting and Cable:

TV Headhunter, Blogger Fitzpatrick Dies

By John Higgins -- Broadcasting & Cable, 4/18/2006 3:12:00 PM

Don Fitzpatrick, once one of TV's top headhunters and perhaps the industry's first blogger, died over the weekend. A longtime friend, Scott Tallal, says Fitzpatrick was found dead in his Alexandria, La. home shortly after being treated for intestinal bleeding at a local hospital.

Fitzpartrick's primary business was as a recruiter for local-TV news talent. Based in San Franciso, Don Fitzpatrick Associates (DFA) was pivotal in helping TV journalists land jobs, move from small markets to a bigger ones, or jump from positions as a reporters to anchor desks. "Don guided the careers of thousands of people in the industry," says Tallal, president of research firm Insite Media Research.

Tallal recalled Fitzpatrick's earliest days as a headhunter trying to build a tape library of talent from TV stations. Fitzpatrick outfitted an RV with 3/4-inch video recorders and would drive around the country, stopping in at a market to tape the newscasts of all the stations, then moving on to the next. The tapes would be copied and edited so clients could be sent a sample of, say, 20 female anchors.

Fitzpatrick was also blogging on TV years before it became a verb, and indeed years before there was a World Wide Web. In the late 1980s, he helped start Fitz's ShopTalk (initially called Rumorville) as an e-newsletter and a forum at online services The Source and Compuserve. Each day, he would digest articles on TV from various newspapers and magazines around the country, focusing primarily on stations. Later, the project morphed to the Web and became TvSpy.com. Fitzpatrick sold TVSpy to job Web site The Vault and closed DFA in 1999.

“Don Fitzpatrick was a friend to so many of us in the industry and will be sorely missed,” said Radio-Television News Directors Association President Barbara Cochran. “His knowledge of the industry was encyclopedic, and he shared his insights generously. All of us at RTNDA will miss him very much.”

RTNDA gave Fitzpatrick its John F. Hogan Distinguished Service Award in 2005 for service to the industry. Fitzpatrick’s funeral will be in Alexandria, said RTNDA, tentatively scheduled for Friday, April 21.

Previous winners of the John F. Hogan:

  • 1959 Frank Stanton
  • 1962 David Sarnoff
  • 1963 Mitchell Charnley
  • 1964 Robert Kintner
  • 1967 Ted Yates
  • 1971 Charlie Edwards
  • 1974 Gordon Sinclair
  • 1978 Barney Oldfield
  • 1979 Rob Downey
  • 1980 John Salisbury
  • 1981 Len Allen
  • 1983 Sig Mickelson
  • 1984 Paul Davis
  • 1985 Ron Laidlaw
  • 1986 Robert Byrd, Mark Fowler
  • 1987 Malvin Goode, J. Laurent Scharff
  • 1988 Vernon Stone
  • 1989 Gordon Manning, Dick Yoakam
  • 1991 Brian Lamb, Ed Godfrey, Bob Packwood, John Spain
  • 1992 Terry Anderson
  • 1996 Sherlee Barish
  • 1997 Walter Cronkite
  • 1999 Hugh Downs
  • 2000 Stanley S. Hubbard, Jack Shelley
  • 2005 Don Fitzpatrick
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This entry was posted by Blogger, on Thursday, April 20, 2006.

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