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| Don Batting (1931-2026) |
Donald H. Batting, a veteran WBZ NewsRadio reporter known for his street reporting over more than 30 years, died Tuesday after a short illness. He was 94.
“Don Batting: A phenomenal humanist, journalist and man. We were all better for his talents and insights,” said Susan Wornick, a former WCVB-TV reporter who worked with him at WBZ. “And some of us (me) were better just for knowing him.”
Batting joined WBZ in 1965 and covered major Boston and national stories, including the Blizzard of 1978, the Boston Strangler killings, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and school desegregation in Boston. He also reported on the administrations of Mayors Kevin White, Raymond L. Flynn, and Thomas M. Menino, and interviewed figures such as Malcolm X and the alleged Boston Strangler.
Nicknamed “Batman” at the station, Batting thrived as a street reporter. He covered the Tall Ships events twice, America’s Cup races, and the first riot at the Newport Jazz Festival. His adventures included helping deliver a baby in a Providence bar, being knocked unconscious while covering Vietnam War protesters, and reporting from Revere during the Blizzard of ’78 after being flown in by helicopter.
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| WBZ's Batman |
Batting began his radio career in Rutland, Vt., after graduating from the Leland Powers School of Voice and Theater. He served two years in the U.S. Army Signal Corps in Germany after being drafted in 1952. He later earned a bachelor’s degree from Boston University’s School of Public Communication.
Before joining WBZ, he worked at stations in Connecticut, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Virginia. At WBZ, he worked the early shift, covering overnight murders, fires, and crashes.
Though he dabbled in television, radio remained his passion.
“The thing that kept bringing me back to radio was that it was so less complicated to get a story to the public,” he told the Boston Herald in 1996. He was inducted into the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2015.