Shane Bishop named distinguished alum

By Laura Barnes
J-School Web reporter

photo by Neel Deshpande

Don't be intimidated by big media markets, says Shane Bishop, '86, who grew up in Conrad, Mont., and now produces stories for "Dateline NBC." Bishop spoke to J-School students during Homecoming week.

In 1989, Shane Bishop sat in the Missoula Club with his wife Erika writing a pact on a paper napkin, sharing beers and burgers as they discussed the future. The couple, both recent Radio-TV grads from the University of Montana, made this agreement: Whichever one of them got the better job, the other would follow.

Erika followed her husband to a series of jobs, and then, four years later, the couple moved to New York when he landed a job with “Dateline NBC.”

Today Bishop, a 1986 J-School grad, is a multiple-Emmy award-winning producer for NBC. He has produced stories on the Columbine school shootings, the Oklahoma City bombings, Hurricane Katrina, and the Sept. 11 tragedies. In light of his career achievements, Bishop was named one of four 2007 Distinguished Alumni by the UM Alumni Association. 

“We’re very proud of our distinguished alumni from homecoming 2007 and congratulate Shane on his career achievements in a relatively short period of time,” said Bill Johnston, director of Alumni Relations. 

As part of the homecoming 2007 celebration, Bishop was invited back to speak at the newly opened journalism building, Don Anderson Hall. Of the schools that make up UM, the School of Journalism has had the highest percentage of graduates receive the Distinguished Alumni Awards since its founding in 1914. The J-School ranks third overall for the number of awards received.

“I pinch myself,” Bishop said to a mixed audience of professors and students in Don Anderson Hall on Sept. 28. “I’m from Conrad [Montana].”

Bishop began his career as a reporter KPAX-TV in Missoula. From there he transferred to a station in Harrisburg, Pa., where a story on the archbishop of Harrisburg won him his first Emmy. Shortly thereafter, Bishop was in Philadelphia on the fast track to New York.

Sept. 11, 2001 would change the scope of Bishop’s career with NBC.

On Sept. 5, six days before 9/11, Bishop approached his boss at NBC to ask about the possibility of working from another state. With his boss’s tentative approval, Bishop’s wife purchased a plane ticket on the ill-fated Flight 93 to San Francisco to start searching for their new home.

On Sept. 10, Erika rescheduled her flight. The next day Flight 93 crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside, and Bishop was covering the 9/11 attacks from the NBC newsroom. When the anthrax scare began, Bishop and his wife made a final decision to leave.  

“Anthrax hit NBC.  That was one floor below me within a month and we were like, ‘All right, we’re so out of here.’ ”

Bishop now works from his home in Oregon, producing six to eight stories a year for NBC. Erika, with whom he has three children, runs a HD production company in their hometown of Medford, Ore. Bishop acknowledges his wife as crucial to his success, and sometimes thinks about the pact they made at the Missoula Club years ago. 

They still have the napkin.

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