Veteran Baltimore — journalist Tim Tooten is dead confirms WBAL

Tim Tooten, a veteran Baltimore TV journalist and non-dominant Kristen Pastor, who founded a Baltimore County Church, has died, announced WBAL TV on Sunday night.

Tooten, one of the longest recognized and best -recognized educational reporters in the region, retired in 2023 after 35 years with WBAL and more than 40 years in journalism. In addition to his roles at the station and at Harvest Christian Ministries, a church in Nottingham, Tooten served as an adjunct professor at Loyola University Maryland, where he taught TV journalism.

When he retired, WBAL -colleague described Deborah Weiner Tooten in A farewell video as the newsrous’s “spiritual center.” News anchor Jason Newton credited tooten for showing him how to do the job and called him a “socially loving, folk-care, heart-on-your-disturbed, all-round good guy.” Tooten signed in December 2023.

On Sunday, Jayne Miller, a long -time colleague, who worked with Tooten from 1988 until her pension said in 2022, the toot’s sudden loss sent shock waves through the news room.

“It was that Tim was that he could always see the positive,” Miller said. “And he was special.”

Tooten’s first break in the media came in high school when a teacher was looking for young black teens to register a public service announcement for NAACP and encouraged people to register to vote. It was only 15 seconds, but he said in an article from Baltimore Banner from 2023 about his retirement that he got endorsed from hearing his voice in the air.

He received his bachelor’s degree in Communication from Florida State University according to Hans Church’s website. As a working journalist, he served a master’s degree in theology from Saint Mary’s Ecumenical Institute in 2007 and his doctor in the Ministry of Virginia University of Lynchburg three years later.

Miller said that he deeply valued children’s education and worked tirelessly with stories of what could prevent their success in school. He was known to advertise snow-related closures using a number of hats collected from a number of Maryland schools that later became A WBAL tradition.

“He made fun of and really tried to get in touch with students and was really a master of education and children,” said Cheryl Bost, former President of Maryland State Education Association, a teaching association. “And he was really a good friend.”

His first journalist job full time brought him to a station in West Virginia, he told the banner in 2023. There he met his wife, Charleen. He moved to Baltimore to work as a general award reporter for WMAR. But the job lasted only 15 months before he was released.

He began working for an insurance company to support his family, but performed freelance TV work, which led him to a full-time job in Wbal in 1988.

Tooten told the banner that his most memorable assignment worked on half an hour of documentary catch in Liberia, West Africa, called “Africa’s Maryland.”

Tooten said the documentary detailed the story of the colonization period when released slaves traveled from Fell’s Point to Liberia. He won a national Edward R. Murrow Award and a National Headliner Award Best of Show for IT. He also won one National Headliner Award For his “East is East” -Documentary, a work that “Profiled life like an African American growing up on the eastern coast of Maryland.”

Tooten specialized in education reporting and said he enjoyed most of the conditions he built over the years among parents, teachers and administrators. He said he often ran into people who would talk to him for a long time after his work day finished.

He still loved the job. But the toot said when he retired at 65, he knew it had been time to move on.

“I’ve never thought of a day I have to retire from this,” he said in 2023. “Who is thinking about it?”

In addition to his television and religious work, the tooten is the author of “leading as an example: a parenting guide for teaching and modeling Christian faith at home”, a non -fiction Christian parenting guide. He also conducted media trainer, performance seminars and crisis communication sessions for churches, schools and universities, according to his website.

On social media, Tooten regularly released streams from his services and other messages about his faith. In a post on February 4, he advised viewers to give in to God’s plans.

“Sometimes it’s hard to do because we think we know a lot of things,” he said, watching the camera. “But today knows that God knows everything.”

In addition to his wife, the toot is survived by his children and grandchildren, according to WBAL. Messages left on Sunday to his family and his church was not immediately returned.

Baltimore Banner Reporter Liz Bowie contributed reporting.

This article can be updated.