‘I think everyone has a story to tell’: Bob Mueller, a 1971 Highland High School graduate is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning journalist
Broadcast journalism has seen quite the metamorphosis since Bob Mueller first began in the business more than 40 years ago.
“When I began in the 1970s, we were shooting our stories on 16mm film and splicing it together. Then we went to video tape, and now digital,” he said. “The transformation to digital has changed the industry the most. We can literally produce an entire story on an iPhone.”
But while the technology has evolved, what the essence of the business has not. It’s still about people.
“I think everyone has a story to tell — an opinion to share — and those voices need to be heard. It is my job to make sure that happens,” he said.
And tell them he has.
Mueller, a 1971 Highland High School graduate, is a seven-time Emmy Award winner. He has also been a winner of the coveted George Foster Peabody Award for investigative reporting and has received other accolades from the Associated Press, United Press International and Radio Television News Directors Association.
“I am very inquisitive, and my passion is telling stories and being the first to inform people of important events,” Mueller said. “The best part of the job is the new people you meet and interview everyday.”
The New Douglas native has never been afraid to work hard, whether it’s on TV or on the farm where he grew up. It was this grassroots upbringing that taught him values like family, community, and hard work, which he’s carried with him throughout his long career.
“I began my career at age 16 in Highland working at WINU-AM Radio,” Mueller said. “I fell in love with journalism, television and radio from the minute I walked into that studio for the first time.”
After graduating from Highland High School in 1971, he attended Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) and received his bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1975. Once he was equipped with an education, Mueller was ready to take on the world, but little did he know how much the world would change in just a few decades.
Mueller got his start in television as a reporter, producer, and anchor for WMDB-TV in Peoria, Ill. He worked for WTVC-TV in Chattanooga, Tenn., where he was an investigative and state government reporter and anchor. He now anchors and reports for WKRN News 2, the ABC affiliate in Nashville, Tenn., where he lives with his wife, Nancy.
“I have been very fortunate to cover some history-making events. I was in Florida for the very first space shuttle launch,” Mueller said. “And I was in Plains, Ga., in 1980 and got the first comments from then former President Jimmy Carter after he learned the American hostages in Iran had been freed the minute Ronald Reagan
was sworn into office.”
In 2002, just five months after the attack on the World Trade Center, he went to Afghanistan and spent two weeks with the 101st Airborne.
“The experience was frightening, exhilarating, patriotic, and sad. It was a close-up view of war and its costs,” he said.
With list of accomplishments as long as his career, Mueller said he’ll have to retire at some point, but he’ll always have a passion for journalism.
As for aspiring young reporters, Mueller, a father of three children (Mari, 28; Will, 25; and Nick, 23), had this bit of advice: “Be prepared to work long hours for low pay for a while, and to work holidays and weekends,” he said. “It is a 24/7 business, and you are always on-call. But it is very rewarding.”
This story was originally published August 12, 2016 at 8:35 AM with the headline "‘I think everyone has a story to tell’: Bob Mueller, a 1971 Highland High School graduate is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning journalist."