Detroit TV reporter Paula Tutman leaves WDIV after 32 years of covering 'everything'

For a decade now, Paula Tutman has filled a special role at Detroit’s Local 4 News at 4 p.m. She has chronicled life in metro Detroit’s communities, profiling people working to do good, overcome challenges and spread joy to others.

In a medium where breaking news — often somber, sometimes tragic — usually dominates, she has offered some balance.

”People need to know what’s going on. But just to have a steady drumbeat of crime and malfeasance and whatever else is going on, you’ve got to have something where you go, ‘Phew, OK, I can breathe,” says the veteran broadcast journalist. “And I have been the ‘phew.’”

Tutman has been with WDIV-TV, the Motor City's NBC affiliate, since 1992. Her last day there will be July 1. She's among a reportedly significant number of employees, on and off the air, who have accepted a voluntary buyout package offered by the station in March.  

In a letter to WDIV general manager Bob Ellis that she shared publicly, Tutman expressed her gratitude for what she described as a “generous” buyout and wrote that “now it’s time to happily exit stage right in the coming weeks.”

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Also departing from the station are sports anchor Bernie Smilovitz, business editor Rod Meloni and reporter Mara MacDonald.

During 42 years in the business, 32 of them in the Motor City, Tutman has covered heartwarming stories along with some of the most devastating events to hit metro Detroit.

Her final project, available for streaming on WDIV’s ClickOnDetroit website, is a 70-minute documentary on the killing of Malice Green by Detroit police officers in 1992 that examines what’s changed and what hasn’t in the decades since then.

Tutman also has done stories on flying with the Air Force Thunderbirds, sailing on a Tall Ship, donning the makeup used in the musical “Cats” and many other human interest topics that have benefited from her on-air energy and warmth.

She has become one of the region’s best known, most versatile voices, someone viewers consider a member of their TV family. And that relationship works both ways. As she wrote several years ago for the station’s website. “I’ve met Presidents and world leaders. Titans of industry and kid entrepreneurs. Criminals and heroes. My favorite interviews, however, are the ones when I stumble over interesting people on the street doing interesting things.”

Tutman started out in TV news at WATE in Knoxville, Tennessee, then worked at WLKY in Louisville, Kentucky, as a police reporter and at WJZ in Baltimore, where she covered crime in her home state of Maryland. It was grueling work that took an emotional toll on the journalists who specialized in it.

Back then, she recalls in a phone interview, those who spotted her on assignment would approach her and ask, ‘Oh my God, what happened?” They assumed some awful occurrence had brought her there.

Tutman arrived at WDIV right around the time of the departure of reporter Chris Hansen, who later became famous for his “To Catch a Predator” segments on “Dateline NBC.” One of her first big assignments was helping cover Malice Green's death.

But when she came to the Motor City, she knew she no longer wanted to report only on murders, crimes, fires and disasters. Instead of sticking to just one beat, Tutman wanted to explore a wide range of areas. By now, she says, she has worked every shift and really “covered everything.”

In her early WDIV days, she admired former anchor Mort Crim’s style as a newsroom leader. On a particularly stressful day, while working a double shift and feeling tired and hungry, she recalls taking her shoes off at a staff meeting and then finding they had disappeared. “I was frustrated and was looking around because the conference room wasn’t that big. I could not find my freaking shoes. And Mort Crim had hidden them!” she says with a laugh. I just thought that was so funny. He wanted some levity. He was so human and so kind.”

Of the newsroom in general, she says, “I can’t think of a soul where if you needed help, someone didn’t jump in and help you.” She says she has worked with some great producers, including current producer Tony Statz, with whom, she jokes, she can bicker “like an old married couple" right up until the cameras start rolling.

Tutman has a playful, exuberant approach to fun topics that connects with viewers, but don’t mistake that for a lack of grit or determination. As a Black woman in local TV news, she says, she has more than paid her dues and experienced being the only woman or person of color covering certain stories. For example, there was the time in Knoxville during a prison lockdown when a warden answered questions from the reporters around her, but not hers.

“And I said something about that. And the warden said something to the effect of, ‘Go on there, little ‘ole gal,’” she says. “There’s a minimizing. There are people who are still trying to do that. They feel like if they ignore you or they don’t speak to you or they say your name wrong or they say mean things to you, that somehow that’s going to minimize you.”

Tutman has continued to speak up for herself when covering those in positions of power, as movers and shakers have learned over the years, and used their underestimation of her to her advantage. “When you’re underestimated, they don’t see you coming,” she says.

Sometimes all it takes for her voice to prompt action is sheer volume. Remembering the high-profile funerals she has covered, she remembers how former President Bill Clinton was walking past a chain link fence separating dignitaries from the press. “You know how they just kind of wave you off?” she says. “I yelled: ‘We’ve been out here waiting to talk to you and we’re freezing! Please don't blow us off!’ He starts laughing, and he walks over and talks to us. It was hilarious!”

Around 2014, Tutman’s focus shifted to the WDIV's reimagined 4 p.m. newscast. “We knew that I was going to have a very specific slot, a very specific job description, which is go out and find the stories which no one else is telling. And I have loved, loved it,” she says.

She calls her afternoon role there a great niche. But when the buyout offer came, she knew it was time to wrestle with a decision. Tutman says she found support from her twin sister, Lisa Tutman-Oglesby, a former TV reporter and weekend anchor in Chicago who built a new career as a photographer and lifestyle blogger.

“We talk every day on my way to work,” Tutman says, crediting her twin sister with being “instrumental" in helping her through the process. She stresses that having "a sister, my twin, a womb mate" who understands the news industry has been "amazing." (One sign of their closeness? When asked how old she is, Tutman declines to be specific, saying, “I don’t care about my age, but my twin sister does.”).

Tutman also praises her husband, Southfield fire chief Johnny Menifee (she is the proud stepmother of three daughters) for his support. During the 16 months she spent working on and off to complete the Malice Green documentary, he was there to make sure she took care of herself.

“I was working on that day and night. I was working on the weekends. I was swimming in this data. I can remember my husband coming to my office door and he would say: ‘You know, Paula, it’s not night anymore. It’s morning. Can you knock off and come to bed? Try to get some rest.’”

The documentary required a deep dive that involved reviewing records, corroborating data and interviewing experts. According to its findings, more than 370 unarmed Black people have been killed by police since Green's death. But, as Tutman says in the report, "Statistically ... less than 15% of police identified as killing unarmed Black people ... have been held accountable with charges or convictions."

Says Tutman, ”I do think it is stunning, utterly stunning, that that is my last story out the door."

In August, Tutman will be inducted into the Michigan Broadcasting Hall of Fame by the Michigan Association of Broadcasters. “Isn’t that a nice way to go out?” says the six-time regional Emmy winner. As for what retiring from local TV will be like, she contemplates taking time to catch her breath, saying, “I think I want my brain to cool down a minute.”

Tutman expresses concern about the future of journalism across the board.

“One of the big things I’ve challenged and been very vocal about is there’s a difference between balance and truth,” she says of the current wave of disinformation and misinformation that distorts and often overwhelms the news provided by legitimate sources. “The truth is the truth. Lies are not balance.”

She leaves with an appreciation of being able as a reporter to share the things that “make you laugh, make you feel, educate you.” Unlike her start in the business, when “no one wanted to see me coming because it would only be bad news,” things have changed.

“Now everybody wants to see me coming,” she says, a sentiment that is bound to continue after her goodbye to Channel 4.

Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.