Longtime WSOC reporter on his retirement: ‘I’m not leaving because I don’t like it.’
Mark Becker answered his phone Wednesday knowing full well the purpose of said call was to talk about WSOC-TV’s announcement that he was retiring after a nearly 38-year career as an on-air reporter for the station.
But for the first few minutes, he was happy to talk about something seemingly totally unrelated: running.
“I ran eight marathons,” said Becker, 63, when the topic of running was broached. (“Jogging” is listed as one of his pastimes in his Channel 9 bio.) His last marathon? “I ran Myrtle Beach Marathon when I turned 50 — to prove that I wasn’t getting older. And guess what? I got older. Two knee surgeries later, I’m not running marathons anymore.”
Now, while his experience as an amateur athlete might not seem germane to a conversation about his time as a professional journalist ... well, let’s just say this: Becker is as adept at using the sport as a metaphor for his career as he is at handling a live shot.
We’ll prove it in just a minute.
Though the news of his retirement dropped on Wednesday morning, along with the announcement of two days of on-air tributes celebrating his contributions to WSOC, he said he actually hung up his microphone almost four weeks ago. His final story aired on Dec. 17, and after taking vacation days for the rest of the month, his contract expired at the end of the year.
“I enjoyed what I did. I’m not leaving because I don’t like it,” said Becker, a native of the Philippines (his father was a Lutheran missionary there until he was in teens) who worked at local news stations in Oklahoma and Missouri before landing in Charlotte in 1984.
In the nearly four decades since, he’s covered killer tornadoes and hurricanes, Jim Bakker and the PTL scandal, 9/11, the Democratic National Convention, the protests after the Keith Lamont Scott shootings, and COVID.
“I’m leaving because I’ve been doing it long enough. It’s great work, but it’s also relentless. It’s every day having something on at 5 or 6. The deadline devil dances frequently upon my shoulders.”
Why he’s leaving and what comes next
Here comes one of those sports metaphors...
“Getting back to the running thing: As we get older, we slow down. I don’t run as fast as I used to. I probably don’t think as fast as I used to. But our business — particularly with the Internet, and the Twittersphere — is speeding up.
“So there’s a real conflict there. And I’m not sure that the speeding up is all good. I think sometimes we’re putting too much premium on now and getting stuff out fast, and not stopping and thinking about it.”
Which is interesting to hear him say, given that WSOC reporter Joe Bruno, when asked to describe Becker’s work, said this in an email to the Observer: “He will find out what happened and why it matters. More importantly, not only will be first, he will be right.”
Bruno added that “his deep sources in Charlotte rival Adam Schefter’s in the NFL.” (If you’re unfamiliar with Schefter, just know he’s a legendary pro football insider for ESPN, and what Bruno said is a huge compliment.)
And Becker’s longtime photographer, Jeremy Letterman, emailed us to point out that Becker “doesn’t interview folks, he just talks to them. He hears what he needs for the story and has never wasted a conversation.”
As for Becker’s retirement plans, he said that in the near term he plans to spend more time helping to care for his mother-in-law, who lives with him and his wife, former WSOC-TV anchor and reporter Suzanne Stevens.
Stevens has a small business called Shop France that involves her giving people guided shopping tours in France, so she’s often traveling. He hopes to do more globetrotting himself once the world opens back up a little more.
Other than that, he doesn’t have many solid intentions besides trying to maintain an exercise routine in the wake of surgery he had last winter to repair a torn meniscus.
“I’ve run shorter distances, but mostly I’ve been riding the bike,” Becker said, before breaking out some gallows humor: “I tell my wife, ‘Well, my knee’ll be fine, but every other bone in my body’ll be broken because I got hit by a car on Park Road.”
When pressed, despite his concerns about the future of the biz, Becker said he is leaving the door open for some sort of limited return to TV news down the road, on a part-time or freelance basis.
For now, however, he’s ready for retirement — and one final sports metaphor.
“Going back to the marathoning,” Becker said, “I mean, I remember when I was training, the first one or two, I was manic about training, and I ran one time 90 days straight. Well, as I got older... I found out, you know what? Less is more. I could do better if I took days off. And I’m kind of there with my career.
“If I can take some days off and relax, (great). But the nature of our business is such that I had to have something on every day. That’s just how we are. In and of itself, each story was manageable and I could do it and I could get that adrenaline rush that happens when you’re out covering stories.
“But I need to step back and say, ‘I’m gonna take a break.’”
