Drummond helps young journalists

Ladies and gentlemen, the mayor has entered Lindenwood.

Maurice Drummond got the ‘mayor’ nickname because when people walked by his old FOX2 desk, they almost always said hi to him. “People would walk by and they knew I was the new guy,” Drummond said. “This went on three times a day.”

Then Martin Kilcoyne, the sports director for FOX2,  said “what are you the mayor of St. Louis.”

But the mayor of St. Louis isn’t actually from Missouri. He was raised in Baltimore, Maryland. “I grew up loving sports,” Drummond said. “I grew up as a Orioles and Colts fan.”

When Drummond was a little child he would pretend to put a pencil up to his mouth and act like it was microphone. “My mom and dad always knew that I wanted to be in sports,” Drummond said.

He was a high school football player, but got injured his junior year. Then he came back to play his senior year, but he did not like his coach. So he had a decision to make. “At some point play time was going to be over,” Drummond said. “I remember I took my uniform and handed it in, then I went to join the school newspaper.”

Then it was off to the University of Maryland, where he choose to get into the electronics side of journalism.

In his professional career, Drummond was a producer for a number of companies for 15 years, before doing on-camera work. And that is where he has been for the last 10 years, hosting and reporting Sports Final and Prep Zone for FOX2 News.

“My job behind the scenes I almost looked at it as being a secret service guy,” Drummond said.

As a producer, he worked for ESPN, the Golf Channel and Black Entertainment Television, to name a few. “Your job as a producer is to take care of the person in front of the camera,” Drummond said.

Drummond’s career has consisted of fresh ideas. But there was one idea he really wanted to do.

The plan  was to interview the past and present of the St. Louis Cardinals. Stan Musial with Albert Pujols, Bob Gibson with Chris Carpenter. Hall of Famers with this generation's greats. The idea fell through, but it was something fresh. “Ideas, ideas, ideas,” Drummond said.

Drummond did have some advice for the young journalists he spoke to at LU, “Do not go to a subject that you interview and not pull up one fact,” he said. “Try to have three facts.”

Even though the mayor has never worked at a professional newspaper, he never forgets his writing roots: “I am a writer at heart.”