As you probably know, I work in an extremely competitive business. We fight to scoop each other, to steal viewers from one another, to win. But the truth is, if you've been around for a while and you've been through the fires with each other, you end up not only respecting your competition, you become friends with whom you share a special bond. One such friend is retiring soon and I wanted you to know what a superb journalist he has been.

Tonight, friends of the great Bob Long, Vice President and News Director at KNBC-TV will gather at Bob's favorite restaurant/watering hole (he has one in every city) to hoist a few in his honor, to lament the bean counters who are killing us, and to laugh. 

The late Hunter S. Thompson once famously described TV news like this: The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

Sadly, Thompson was right. But what Thompson didn't know, was there have always been good men and women who have stood up to the thieves and pimps in this business. Bob was in the vanguard of that group. Like any good Marine (which he was), Semper Fi--always faithful--is the code by which he lives. It is the code by which he practices journalism. It is the code by which he protects his people. It is the code by which he treats his friends.

I had the good fortune to work with Bob and to learn from Bob in the 1990s when I was a young reporter at KCAL-TV and Bob was an executive producer. At KCAL, he was a bow-tie wearing, gravel-voiced, old-school tough guy who didn't suffer fools. But if you cared to do it the right way, and you listened to what the old man had to say, he was going to back you up every time. He was and remains as loyal to his friends and to his grunts as any right Marine would. 

Turn on the news on virtually any channel in Los Angeles, and you'll find reporters and anchors who experienced the tutelage of Bob Long. When I talked to him on the phone this week, he described them as his "sleeper cells, ready to burst out of their holes at The Enlightenment" to take back the industry and restore the proper order. It was said in classic "Bob Long speak," an always amusing blend of history-lesson, irony, humor and poetry. A good turn of phrase, a well-written sentence--words--matter to Bob and he inspired a generation of TV news journalists to care about them as much as he does.

And now this larger than life character who we've worked with and respected and loved is leaving. Bob Long retires at the end of this month. The day after he walks out of the newsroom, he boards a plane bound for his next assignment, in Turkey. He has agreed to an appointment at a university in Istanbul to teach journalism ethics. To those students, I say, you couldn't have a better teacher.