He's one of the most creative and funny guys on local television news, and he's still in the formative years of his young career. He's a new dad, a passionate Milwaukeean and that product testing guy that you know and love on WTMJ-TV. He's Vince Vitrano, and he's our latest Milwaukee Talks subject.

OMC: Give us the brief "Vince Vitrano Story."

Vince Vitrano: Sure. I was born in Milwaukee and grew up in Wauwatosa. We moved there when I was about 2 years old, and I spent the remainder of my formative years in Tosa. I went to Wilson Elementary and McKinley Elementary, Longfellow, Tosa East (class of 1992), and then from there to college at St. Norbert.

OMC: Do you come from a big family?

VV: My brother (Nick) is four years younger than me, he also went to Tosa East, also went to St. Norbert.

And he is now in radio in Green Bay, does an AM sports talk show and stuff (WNFL 1440). And then my sister (Emily), she's 10 years younger than me, so she is going to be a senior at the University of North Carolina Greensboro and she wants to be an actress.

I did some sports radio up in Green Bay also when I was working in TV, it was kind of like a part-time thing with another guy at the TV station. I produced his show and was a little bit of a sidekick ... and we needed a call screener so, I asked my brother, who was in college then. When I moved on from the show he took my spot, so (basically) he owes me everything.

OMC: Did you know what you wanted to do when you were in high school or even when you graduated college? Did you have a pretty good idea of what field you wanted to get into?

VV: In high school I wanted to be an astronaut, and I'm totally serious. I went to space camp, I saved money from my Milwaukee Sentinel paper route for a number of years and paid to go to Space Academy Level 2 in Huntsville, Ala. For 10 days they teach you how to fly the space shuttle, essentially. I was there, I was going to do that, I was going to shoot for it but I just was terrible at math and I hated it. You can't go to Purdue and major in aerospace engineering if you can't do math. I was struggling to get Bs and Cs in math and I was sleepwalking through advanced English so it made me think that some people are made to be astronauts and some not ... and I was not.

So I knew when I left high school I wanted to do something with writing and communications. By the time I left college I knew I wanted to be in TV news.

OMC: What advice would you give a college student who wants to be on-air someday?

VV: Absolutely get an internship. Get two, get three, get as many internships as you can because it's not even as important that you major in journalism or you major in communications or whatever. You could be a political science major and learn all the TV stuff you need to learn in your internships. And I've also told interns at our station, because we're a bigger market, obviously the biggest in the state, intern at a big station to see how it works, to see how the big city operates and all that -- but also try to intern at a smaller station.

I interned in Green Bay where I eventually started and there you just get to touch more stuff, you get to do -- you get to edit stories, you get to write stories, it's just a lot more hands-on because they need the help.

OMC: So, Green Bay was your first job in TV?

VV: WFRV, which is the CBS up in Green Bay. I got an internship for my senior year, and two months into it they offered me a job as a weekend producer. When they hired me for the internship the guy who hired me said, "Now, just so you know, Green Bay's a medium size market, and we don't hire people with no experience for jobs. So just in fairness to you, probably when your internship is over you're going to have to go out and look for a job in Wausau or Eau Claire or someplace smaller."

And then two months later I was producing the weekends. And then my news director told me, "Now just so you know, if one of our other producing jobs opens up we don't hire (interns), so don't feel bad but you may get overlooked for that." And right before I graduated they gave me the 10 o'clock producing job.

OMC: Is that the progression in the news business -- going from a smaller market to a larger market, to an even larger market?

VV: Some people reach a point where they like where they are. And many people started smaller than Green Bay, so if Green Bay's your third stop and not your first, you're maybe predisposed to staying there, anyway.

But it depends a lot on what your personal situation is and if you are the main anchor, the number one guy in Green Bay, those people make great money, and they have great jobs, and it's a great city. So maybe your journey is over. I know many people who are here in Milwaukee, and it's a stepping-stone, and they know it when they come.

OMC: And was your preference to get back to Milwaukee?

VV: Absolutely. From the day I started working in television, as much as I love Green Bay and I had a great time, I really enjoyed working there, but I knew that some day I wanted to come back here, and I knew that specifically I wanted to work for channel 4. That's what we watched when I was a kid. So that's what I wanted to do, I knew that.

OMC: When you started at channel 4, do you have the ability to come up with your own stories? What is your typical day like now?

VV: When I started I actually took a part-time job in the spring of 2000, and the news director whom I had talked with over the course of two years basically banging on his door saying "Let me in," said "All right, I can guarantee you three days a week of work and maybe some filming."

I'm like, "All right we'll take it, we'll take it ... all right, bye." That guy must've been thinking, "Oh my God, he took it?" At that point I would do like whatever, sure, but from day one they've always sought and valued input from everyone. Your day starts every day with a news meeting involving managers and reporters and producers, and you sit at the table and you get your turn to pitch your stories.

You don't always do them because there are a number of things that we already know are happening and only so many people but if you come in with a story that you're passionate about and you can sell it to the news management, then you'll get an opportunity to go out and do that, if you can sell it.

They may very well disagree (with your idea) and then you just go off to your car accident or fire or whatever story it is that day.

OMC: It seems (in local TV news) that everyone just reports what everyone else is doing? Does that make sense?

VV: I think it depends on how you use the information. Absolutely you should monitor, whatever business you're in, (you should monitor what) your competitors are doing. And we have the ability, it's such a public product, that in the instant our 5 o'clock news is on so is 6's and so is 12's and everybody else, so you absolutely should see what they're doing. (We want to know), did we miss anything? Do we have an opportunity to pat ourselves on the back because we had something they didn't? Let's see where we stand in relation to everyone.

I think the danger is then we still need to chart our own course, and we need to have our own values and our own beliefs about what news in Milwaukee needs to be and to the extent that we let other organizations push us in different directions -- I don't think that's healthy nor is it for them. We all have our own identities and stations and they're attractive to people for different reasons. No one's ever going to watch just one station.

OMC: Do you think there's enough room for five local news stations in the market?

VV: There's obviously room because they're still there. And they're not there if they're not making some money or at least serving some purpose. So there are a lot of people who live here, and people have diverging ideas and opinions about what they want in their news. So as long as they can sustain themselves there's obviously room.

OMC: How has media and local TV changed just in the five years that you've been in it?

VV: There is more news more often in more places, and that changes how we work, how we operate and how we cover everything. With 24-hour news on all the cable stations now there's our desire on a local end, you see a lot of our stations trying to be more 24 hour. So if there's a breaking news event at 2 in the afternoon very often at least three of our stations will be carrying it live because we got to have it now. Because if we don't have it now, well, they might and then you'll turn to them to see the updates.

OMC: What do you like doing the most at your current position?

VV: I do like being funny, really. I like the comedic aspects of my job most, and I think there's room for that in local news. You don't want to lead with a Vinnie goof off story. However, there is room as we've seen with the product tests or features from Summerfest or lighter moments and I've really enjoyed presenting those.