Regarding Wald's decision to step down as News Director at Channel 5...

 As long as I’ve known Jeff Wald – going back nearly 25 years now, soon after I started my own broadcasting career – he has functioned as the conscience of the business, the role model for a conscientious and responsible news executive in a industry where increasingly all the financial and professional incentives drive newsroom decision-making in a suicidal race to the bottom. He’s been an unfailingly courteous, decent and serious guy in an industry that could be most charitably described as alarmingly deficient in those qualities.

Ordinarily it would generate a cynical snicker to hear that a media executive suddenly left his job “to spend more time with his family” – but Jeff deserves nothing but praise and respect from his journalism colleagues and his viewers for making a difficult but honorable decision. I know I’m not alone in wishing him well in all of his future endeavors.

Joel Bellman