The day Dave Chappelle showed up in Portland unannounced around 2004, KGW anchor Joe Donlon was among those buzzing about him.
Donlon being Donlon, he happened upon the great comedian while both were out and about.
"I literally bumped into him at the Heathman the day everyone was buzzing about him being in town," Donlon recalled. Before Chappelle did his famous impromptu concert at Pioneer Courthouse Square at midnight, Donlon convinced him to take a picture.
It's a knack for finding news, or at least finding out the most important doings in town, that made Donlon a staple among Portland TV news viewers. We asked Donlon, the subject of our PBJ Interview this week, to send over a few shots he had lying around of his Portland days.
What we got was a compendium of fun and often-hilarious images of Donlon with the famous, the infamous and the smart, not to mention an army of local heroes.
Donlon's leaving Portland for Chicago's WGN at a TBD time over the next few weeks. His departure has his colleagues reeling.
"I’ll miss Joe’s smarts and his sense of humor the most," said KGW's News Director Rick Jacobs. "He is such an experienced journalist, brainstorming coverage with Joe was always a highlight. Joe has an uncanny way of cutting through the clutter and getting to the questions our audiences would really want answered."
And, naturally, Donlon has a knack for getting, and nailing, the big interview.
"He has a disarming style that provokes openness and honesty," Jacobs said. "I have great memories of his sit-downs with Phil Knight, Jimmy Fallon, Tom Brokaw and Lester Holt just to name a few. Joe hit home runs on those interviews because he came prepared. He read their books, did his homework and asked terrific questions.
"But it was really Joe’s personality, his sense of humor and his friendly style that brought out the best in those interviewees and in all of us who’ve known him."
Donlon arrived in Portland in 1997 during what he says was a good time.
"The station was on an upward trajectory. It had had a lot of success: All I did was ride the wave, and I was fortunate to be surrounded by an amazing group of people," he said.
It didn't hurt that the station was able to maintain its status as a top-rated local channel.
"That’s what, like it or not, a lot of us are judged on, and if the ratings aren’t good, I’m not sure I would have been here that long," Donlon said. "The anchor is the gateway to the product, and if the ratings aren’t good, they look at the anchor.
"That said, I’ve never worried about the numbers. I just show up and do the best job I possibly can. All I can do is hope that people find me credible, likable and in the end, watchable."
Part of that watchability stemmed from his willingness to put his personality on display. His entertaining "Cup of Joe" series, for instance, came about after Donlon traveled to San Antonio (for the 2014 Blazers-Spurs playoff series).
"I went down and did off-the-wall funny stories about the city, the culture. We did sort of spoof on the Riverwalk where I took over one of those Riverwalk cruise ships," he recalled.
He did more than that. He took over the boat's PA system and declared, "This is Joe D. of KGW … this (river) is like a trickle in a bathtub.”
Next, Donlon tried to get a San Antonio bar to adopt the Blazers for the series. Watch it here
"We found a bartender who played along with the gag: Her name was Sugar," he said. "We had the whole thing set up and she hit all her lines perfectly. She said, 'This is not gonna happen.' I said, 'I thought your name was Sugar!'
"I asked her if we could put up a Blazers flag, and we enlisted two guys in the bar to fake throw me out. That did well online. Everywhere we went after that in San Antonio, people said, “There’s that guy who got thrown out of the bar!"
He also did another bit poking fun at San Antonio's long traffic lights.
"I pressed the button to cross the street," he said. "From there, we cut to shots of me clipping my nails, sunning myself with a piece of foil, reading a book. As we counted down the time it took before we could cross, Gene, the photographer, thought it was a good idea for me to have a beard. We cut the beard after each shot and reversed the video in editing so it looked like I was literally growing a beard while waiting for the light.
"When we came back, (News Director) Rick Jacobs said I need to do more of these here, and 'Cup of Joe' was born."