Inducted 2015
John Sabin’s girlfriend Elaine was so impressed with his voice that she pushed him to take elocution lessons and audition for a job in radio. Her persuasion paid off. He was hired at KFUO, where he worked for a short time before being hired as the news director of WTMV. John and Elaine married and she became his lifelong supporter.
His work covering the floods of the Mississippi River in 1947 cemented John’s reputation as an accomplished radio journalist, and that led to an offer to join the KMOX news staff in 1950. He continued working for the CBS O&O past his 65th birthday, having received special permission to violate the company’s mandatory age, thanks to a request from his co-workers and the station’s manager, Robert Hyland. When he retired in the late 1980s, John Sabin had been honored by the Associated Press nine years in a row for his contributions to broadcast journalism.
John was the first “non-print” person to be elected president of the St. Louis Writers’ Guild. His spare-time project of teaching broadcast production and journalism brought students into the newsroom as interns, where he mentored literally hundreds of potential broadcasters.
