I will be updating this with remembrances from friends and family periodically, and hope to eventually publish a complete memorial of my father's life and work.  If you knew my father and would like to share your memories of him, please e-mail them to me (wab@well.com) and I will include them.

Below is the text of the obituary press release.  If you need an image of my father for publication, please let me know

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[Please post copy in newsroom and forward to obituary desk.  Open copyright headshot of Baker is available at http://www.well.com/~wab/memorial.html.  Contact Bill Baker, Jr. at XXX-XXX-XXXX, or wab@well.com for more details.]
 

SLUG "30" FOR VETERAN SEATTLE JOURNALIST BILL BAKER

Veteran broadcaster and journalist Bill Baker passed away May 5th, due to complications following surgery for cancer.  He was 59.

Baker was a familiar presence on the Seattle airwaves for almost two decades, working as an on-air reporter for KING-TV and KING, KIRO and KAYO radio stations.  Over the course of his thirty-five year career in journalism he worked for virtually every news media outlet in the Seattle area, including KSTW, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Weekly, as well as the former stations.

Baker first came to prominence covering marches and riots against the Vietnam war for KING, gaining unusual access during the occupation of the University of Washington's ROTC building when he and his cameraman were barricaded in the building with protesters.  He won the first of many Society of Professional Journalism awards for those reports.  He also covered the Black Panthers, city politics and the Washington legislature, and briefly anchored the noon newscast.

In 1979, Baker investigated seismic fault lines threatening the site of a proposed nuclear power plant in the Skagit Valley.  His report was credited, in part, for killing the project.  He also aired one of the first exposes on price gouging in the funeral industry.  In his brief tenure as KIRO's investigative reporter he won three more SPJ awards.  Ironically, he was removed from that position for a story he refused to report, on gay bathhouses as a public health risk, insisting there was no story worth airing.

His career away from the camera was equally as remarkable.  He was promoted to be the news director of KING-AM before reaching the age of 30, and later served as television assignment editor for both KING and KIRO.  He also produced special segments for both stations and occasionally directed broadcasts of the evening news. It was not unusual for him to coordinate multiple news crews in the field, write the copy for the lead stories and direct the final newscast, all in one day.

Baker started out as a general assignment reporter for the Skagit Valley Herald and Daily Olympian before moving into broadcast journalism.   However, he continued to write for print media throughout his career, winning yet another SPJ award for a Seattle Weekly article.  Before Kramer vs. Kramer popularized male parenting, Baker wrote a feature for the P.I. on the experience of raising his son after a divorce.  He claimed to have received more comments on that article than any other in his career, mainly from divorced women glad for the attention his article brought to their struggles.  Years later he and his son wrote companion articles enlarging on their experiences on the occasion of his son's graduation from high school.

Baker also taught radio and broadcast journalism at the University of Washington School of Communications from 1982 to 1996, returning to the program from which he graduated in 1962.  He took great joy in passing his craft and sense of journalistic ethics on to the next generation of reporters.  "You can walk into any newsroom on the West Coast and find my kids," he often said.  Baker also held a master's degree in political science from the UW.

Some of his last projects were producing documentaries on crime victim's rights and reducing dropout rates among migrant farmworkers in the Yakima Valley.

Baker was an avid hiker and skier.  He was a member of The Mountaineers and taught classes in backcountry first aid.  He also belonged to numerous ski clubs over his lifetime.

He is survived by his son, William A. Baker III, of Sacramento; his brother Earl Shore, of Mt. View, CA; his sister, Beverly Blunck, of Woodinville; his granddaughters Josephine Dorothy and Deirdre Rose.  A public memorial service will be held at Washington Memorial this Friday, May 21st, at 3p.m.