Signing Off in B-More

For the past 35 years, Tim Tooten has been the Education Reporter for WBAL in Baltimore.

Tooten will step down from that role when he retires in mid-December.

Tooten said he slid into education reporting by simply pitching a lot of education stories until the station began calling him its education reporter. He was never assigned the beat. Although the vast majority of his stories come from schools in the region, he has filled in on sports stories, and on stories that were so large that they demanded time from most of the staff.

“I was really interested in education. And so it somehow just kind of happened,” he said.

Although he said he still loves the job, he said it is time to move on. “I never thought about one day I’m going to retire from this. Who thinks about that?”

H/T Baltimore Banner