SALT LAKE CITY — With a career that has spanned decades, KSL Newsradio’s Doug Wright has covered hundreds of Utah’s biggest stories.
A long-time fixture on KSL Newsradio, Wright wraps up his final daily show on June 1, 2018, his 40th anniversary with the station.
On June 1, 1978, Wright’s first day included the U.S. Embassy investigating Russia for using bugs to listen in on conversations. At the time, he already had 10 years of radio experience under his belt, so jumping in on a big story was second nature already.
“Do you know what I love? When I end up, just by circumstance, being at the console and everything cuts loose,” he recalls.
In an oral history project with KSL’s Maria Shilaos, Wright remembered covering everything from the Salt Lake tornado to the Chicago Democratic convention in 1996 — the first year they held it there after riots in 1968.
Wright was at KSL for hours on Sept. 11, 2001 — breaking down only after he left work and heard a special broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on KSL, meant to help comfort the state after the terrorist attacks.
“We got the information out as best we could. And then to think we could flip the switch at eight o’clock and hear the beauty of the choir and what a comfort it was to the community. I thought, ‘Man that’s what KSL is all about,'” Wright says.