Steve McKinney used his Journalism to enlighten and awaken. He taught us through his body of work how to get up again and again after being knocked down

When Steve McKinney walked into News Room of the Nassau Tribune Offices/Plant Shirley and Deveaux Street for the first time around mid-1980, he could hide behind a needle and not be spotted. Tall, Angular. Slim. Athletic.  He joined Carlton Smith; who today never seems to age and Matt Maura who – believe it or not back then-sported a mini afro; - this trio; all graduates from Aquinas College’s former Palmdale campus.

(In years much later, I joked with Steve; “a mini-van would need additional front and back bumpers to safely hide behind you.” Wondering now if weight is an underlying condition attached to former Tribune News Reporters.  (Hoping Ivan Johnson doesn’t take this personal).

From that moment and for the next several years; Steve would immerse himself in the most concentrated and advanced local training for Journalists’ in the country. The veritable force of Tribune Publisher and Editor Eileen Dupuch Carron and her husband Managing Editor Roger Carron, Sub Editor Vic Rigby, Training Editor Tim Albert, Editor John Marquis. Star Reporters Kirk Davis, Ivan Johnson, Athena Damianos, Anthony Forbes, Tyrone Olander Senior, Mark Beckford, and Veronica Strachan.

Ably assisted by a supporting cast; Doris Bullard, who maintained an archive of clippings and information in her much prized library, photographers Derek Smith, Oswald Hanna. We worked like a family, looked out for each other. No high drama of getting in other people’s business, nothing ever went missing.

Much later Steve and I met we reminisced on the days of our early pupilage in The Tribune. Those amazing women and men- Hazel Chea, Jackie Moxey, Prescola Newman, Christine White, Bertie Johnson, Reverend Moses Ferguson, Laura Roberts, Gerri Smith, Nan Culmer, Beverly Sands, Kate Tsavousis, Hollis Glover,  H. R. Rusty Bethel, Gordon Knowles, Mrs. “Tweet” Poitier, Sammie Haven, Angela Butler, Chris Bain.  And the friends of the News Room like Vincent Ferguson, former Principal of Aquinas College, free-lance photographers Franklyn Gustavous Ferguson, Howard Glass, Vincent Vaughn, Father Marcian Peters, Edmund Moxey, the attaché from the British High Commission who first name was Alan whose surname eludes me.

Living kept Steve busy recording history; it follows that record keepers often forget they also make history; their story is thus left to the essayist.  

Steve’s death on Monday 5th October 2026 has numbed us.

Steve had climbed to the mountaintop.

His was a house hold name before he turned 30 years old. People stopped him in the street to quiz him on his opinions on national matters.

His voice became one of the most recognizable in a nation; where he never got a nomination from any political party to contest a seat in the Parliament; although he was more than interested; never was appointed to any Government Board, even though his intellect and skillsets were proven; never given any national honor or award - and only in death has there been the usual customary epitaphs. And the most substantive public service appointment he ever got was quickly snatched from him.  

Steve made a pivot from a Cub Sports Reporter to one of the Nation’s prolific print and broadcast Journalists in Current and Political Events.

His PEACE Radio station survived where others fumbled in a highly competitive market and its success was driven substantially by Steve’s charisma, contacts, affability and his ease of pace in navigating the political mine fields.

Most of all Steve always credited it to the training he got at The Tribune. A training which not only taught him how to write and relate a story but connected him to the back stories for a clearer and articulate measure of what was going on around him.

In a climate of political subterfuge; Steve quickly mastered the game; or so he thought. On any given Sunday, Steve demonstrated the mantra of Sir Etienne Dupuch’s biography; _ “A Salute to Friend and Foe Alike”; which all of us as Tribune alumni read.

Steve suffered the consequences of “bucking City Hall” and too often he allowed his eagerness and his enthusiasm to push for progress in a closed room where arm chair pundits become vapor at the opening of the door.

Bold, courageous, daring.

He made friends easily and you really had to be the nerd or the repeat offender to lose Steve’s confidence or support.

Steve got knocked down often. Yet he always got back up before the count of ten.

I remember chatting with him after the switch blades held by smiling gentle faces pierced his back at ZNS; when he gullibly thought his political loyalty and obedience would count for something. He had put it all on the line in the consequential 1992 General Election; as others played it safe. Now with the heavy lifting done; the others wanted the spoils of the Deliverance. And they got it.

He and another reporter, whose name I do not have permission to call; were clearly and openly  supporting the Official Opposition Free National Movement and Hubert A. Ingraham to wrest the government from Lynden Pindling’s PLP and its 25 year grip on governance in 1992.

I would chat with Steve and the Reporter mentioned on mornings at McDonald’s Oakes Field for the Breakfast Club Meeting. Hubert Ingraham, Henry Bostwick, Arlington Butler and Gene Toote at one circular table and Steve in the neighboring cubicle leaning over into Mr. Ingraham’s attentive ear.

We were political rivals. I was immersed in the PLP re-election campaign, the Editor of its many print form mouth pieces. Steve and I -two former Tribune Reporters; who were often maligned by the PLP brass, on different ends of the pendulum. In less than five years after the 1992 General Election, Steve was working directly with me and the PLP in the 2002 general election campaign which returned a PLP Government. The irony of this circumstance I will get to before I put down my pen.

What Steve was sticking his neck out to do in 1992 required more than back bone. Steve would share with me much later how he used his talents and his position to leverage and provide some cushion for the other coin in the democracy in an age where Private Broadcasting did not exist. Through this testing period his bond and friendship with Obie Wilchcombe, the avowed PLP News Director –Steve’s boss at ZNS; suffered no hiccups. Up to Obie’s death two years ago Steve and Obie remained confidantes and friends.

I was more than disappointed when Steve was not chosen as a Commentator on national radio and television for Obie’s State services.

The FNM Landslide on the night of August 19th 1992 was a changing of the guard in the physiology of the nation. PLPS fled into hiding and FNMS “ took their country back.”

With Obie and several other ZNS personnel with close ties to the PLP resigning their posts; a new General Manager was appointed at ZNS; Steve was in the chair as “Acting News Director.”

Never before had Steve’s academic qualifications been questioned in a field where his professional abilities and superiority over his contemporaries were never in doubt.

“They didn’t have my back” Steve told me later. Referring to how the FNM caved to the attacks and removed him.

He was floated out to Bahamas Information Services (BIS).

The savage attacks on Steve are just unworthy of repeating.

In the end, Steve’s portfolio, quality, variety and body of work vindicates him.

You see Steve had come to his career forged in a fire to conquer suspicion and tolerate criticism. It came with the territory if you were a Tribune Reporter in the Pindling era; for civil servants and party sycophants to just be mean spirited to us as if we were enemy.

Times change. The Politics matures. Even if only in tea spoon measures dripped into a vast ocean of continuance.

Yet the record will reflect the most extensive and reliable coverage the then governing PLP received at any of its National Conventions and in the Parliament came from The Tribune.

“The powers that were”, side lined Steve at the Broadcasting Corporation of the Bahamas yet they could not erase the fact that he had become another distinguished alumnus of The Tribune who rose to become News Director at the Corporation joining Ed Bethel, Dorothy Panza and Carlton Smith.

Steve jump started Talk Radio in the country, which was begun by Anthony Delaney and “Immediate Response” on ZNS; with Steve taking it to a new quality and audience as he cleverly and deftly chartered turbulent political waters.

He became a trusted reliable voice in times of Natural Disasters and National Events. His training and skill sets had given him a contact list of eminent and responsible Bahamians and residents who were willing to enhance the integrity of Steve’s reporting.

He anchored himself through other private radio stations, often times his personality and branding lifting stations out of obscurity before he was able to string together the deal to establish PEACE Radio.

He misfired with an ambitious programme to bring live bands into the studio for his Talk Show but the entertainment community gave him kudos for what Steve wanted to achieve for their enterprise.

His trade mark, News intro of “the nation’s Chief Executive” as he referred to Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, was imitated by the country.

Steve built a credible Advertising Public Relations Agency called “The Facilitators” with a radio production studio where Steve exuded another of his trade mark skills in sound editing.

He hired and trained young graduates from High School and the University of the Bahamas for the Peace Radio News Room.

He worked to have a Press Club and add standards and a professional bloc for the Fourth Estate.

For a minute it seems as if Steve never hit pause. Just producing, delivering even when the pay check was not forthcoming or arriving too late to matter.

He was generous to a fault, “E. W. you eat yet?”  When I wandered into his office top of the Hill Maura Lane or made by way to the end of the street which rests on Marcus Bethel Way.

Let me rewind back to our early days at The Tribune. As Steve was settling into his Sports Cub Reporter role at the Tribune I was on the way out the door to Broadcasting. For more than forty years  our careers continued to cross and circle the same paths.

At the genesis of our sojourn were the training, preparation and skills we developed at the Tribune. This was our bond and even when we were on opposite sides of the debate; we had civility.

Nassau- circa 2009-  in the travails of an electrical black out.  After effects of a bad storm. Bank machines were down. Food stores closed having exhausted their generators. No Petrol and Gas stations shut tight. There is one restaurant I knew would be open and I could have a meal. Ye old Harbour Moon Chinese Restaurant on the corner of East Bay Street and Deveaux Street- a five minute walk from The Tribune.

Back in the day this was the gathering lunch hub of the Tribune newsroom on pay day Fridays.

Yes the power was off in the Harbour Moon but the galley was popping.

Hardly had I ordered with my waitress- in walks Steve McKinney with Treva, his wife and kids. I recall Treva was going into 2nd form at St John’s College on Market Street, the year I graduated there.

Steve doesn’t see me. Or so I think. I watch him go to the counter and tell “Lyn”- the Chinese Cashier - he has no cash because of the power outage so he will be paying with a check. The card swipe machine is also down. They know Steve. It’s not company policy to take checks but they have known him from a young man growing up in The Tribune.  

“E.W’”, Steve shouts to me without looking over his shoulder. His perceptiveness has nabbed me. As his family takes their seats; Steve comes to my solo table to chat for a bit.

I joke with him about his new “gas hog black BMW with the sporty wheels”.

“We use to walk here from The Tribune and walk to the bus stop to go home or wait for Derek Smith or Ossie Hanna to drop us home in the News Room car ” Steve grinned.

“Now you got yourself  a fresh luxury sedan Bob Marley and the Wailers” I said. Corny then. Cornier now.

Steve boasted his trade mark laugh. He developed a professional cagey laugh which he used when a guest on any of his Radio Talk Shows was fidgeting for answers.

Steve’s mom and my mother were related through the Gibson clan from Savannah Sound Eleuthera. Yet this connection was never central to our friendship.

We are enjoying our conversation on our Tribune days - my meal has arrived and starters for Steve’s family are hitting their table.

I recall how he married very young; Treva was a Cashier at the old City Meat Market down town Frederick Street or as they say on the Marker Wharf.

They took up marital residence in a quaint set of green clap board row houses just as you swung around Cromwell Drive to get onto Eden Street in the Farrington Road district.

We mused on all of these stories. And we kept coming back to the intoxicating elixir of printer’s ink and the streams of news print which clogged our air ways passages that moment we first entered the Tribune Building as  high school graduates.  Climbed those steps to be greeted by the bronze bust of Leon Dupuch, the founding Publisher and Editor and Father of Sir Etienne;  and the three centuries William Caxton removed original printing press from which the newspaper opened its eyes in the then Colony of the Bahama Islands in 1906.

“I get a longing at times to just visit, pick up a newspaper, stick my head into the New Room door as my excuse to inhale that scent and touch the Printer’s Wheel,” Steve said.

We entered as Trainees. Rigid classes in the afternoon. On the news beat from 8:30 am. In our time The Tribune was an evening publication. By 4 pm the flats were just about ready to leave the Compositor’s Stone for the Dark Room down stairs. Here the negatives would be transferred to thin aluminum plates and these plates would be properly placed on the German Heidelberger Press, carefully supervised by Percy Ford, father of Sports Greats Eddie and Wenty Ford.

By 4 pm the hundreds of newspaper boys and mature vendors were gathering; waiting for the whirring speed of the Printing Press to deliver to them their cash crop and they in turn deliver to Tribune readers across the island.

Steve worked in Sports. Those of us in general news were around until the paper came off the Press. The Sports reporters left the office around 3:30/4pm to rest up for assignments later in the evening. For the Islands Soft Ball, Baseball, Body Buildings, Soccer, Cycling, Basket Ball, Darts, Pool , Volleyball, Cricket, Tennis, Squash, Martial Arts, Gymnastics assignments. And Bowling was big. A league for just about every cause, business  or endeavor you can imagine.

Steve had Junior and High School sports in his bailiwick. School bell rang at 3pm and in another hour Tigers, Cobras, Magic Men, Rattlers, Comets, Big Red Machine, Aces, Pacers, Giants, Blue Waves- boys’ and girls’ sports were in Steve’s line up and beat.

Steve had the personality to engage with these athletes, their coaches, the Executives of the various Sporting organizations, the referees, umpires and judges.

There are the regional  games like Carifta and the Central American and Caribbean Games and the international fare  of the Commonwealth Games, Pan –Am Games, the World Games and the Olympics for which Bahamian athletes and teams are preparing. Sports are a hectic news room beat with  multiple moving parts.

This is where the decorum and training of The Tribune matters. There were Sports Reporters from other outfits getting into arguments and even physical with players and officials.

There were complaints from players and officials on how other outlets seemed to show favoritism and bias and even blanked out certain Players.

Steve was bigger than that. The Sports World loved him.

Steve made that leap to Broadcasting (ZNS). Here again I was closing that door at ZNS  and headed to the Nassau Guardian, back to print.

I would tell Steve and Carlton Smith they came to Broadcasting with an unfair advantage because the one Senior Sports Assistant Editor was grammatically challenged and subject and verb impaired. May pass in print but sounds horrible in the ear. That may seem a bit harsh. But this is Journalism.

Steve’s Tribune training took him to the head of the pack.  

By 2002, Mr. Ingraham had been forced to sit out the upcoming General Election. O. A. “Tommy” Turnquest would lead the FNM incumbent Government into the political battle.

Steve’s 1992 energy to bring the FNM to power was exhausted in the ten year span.

Steve’s public relations contribution in the PLPS messaging in that campaign was simply awesome. He knew the culture and the mood of the people. He sensed persons in his age demographic would relate to the Pop and Bahamian music of their youth and he spun hits from “The O Jays” into a tremor for the FNM.

Alas, Steve would learn again that kisses go by favors in the political kingdoms of the world; effort and contribution and reward are new qualities now fully embraced by a PLP led by Philip Davis. Shafted by the FNM and ten years later to be put on hold again by the PLP; Steve shredded his naivety and trust.

Who feels it knows it.

His friendships across the nation gave him the concrete base to pick himself up once again and get back in the fight.

When Steve’s daughter was tragically killed, leaving behind an infant daughter, I found him outside on his steps at his residence alongside former ZNS News Editor Sherman Brown. I sat with him again at another family tragedy.

When Rodney Moncur passed away suddenly, I saw Steve just about every day. The family wanted Steve to do the commentary for Radio Bahamas for Rodney’s State funeral. Somehow again the daggers were in Steve’s back. Permission denied.

Before Rodney became the Talk Show super star of afternoon television/radio, Steve was giving Rodney a regular co-host spot on his “Hard Copy” afternoon show on PEACE RADIO.

Those mornings of leaving the McDonald’s Breakfast Club and moving over to The Reef for a Bahamian breakfast are so memorable. Steve had developed an appetite. His weight was obedient to the hearty service of his double Boil and Stew Fish with grits and johnnie cake and the butter.

I can see him now in the late evening fretting it off;  as he crawled Goodman’s Bay.

So many years ago when I was at the Nassau Guardian, a gentleman came to see me about a problem with his land lord and the apartment he was renting. The gentleman turned out to be Steve’s dad and the landlord was a sitting PLP Member of Parliament.

I know Steve and I talked about it and I spoke with the MP whom I happened to know fairly well and I was satisfied that the complaints of Mr. McKinney were justifiable. I can’t recall whether he worked for BEC- the Electrical Corporation or BaTelCo, the phone company. I think my story got the landlord off his ass.

We both had this experience of having Peter Nygard, the disgraced and jailed Canadian Fashion Merchandiser as a Client in our separate Public Relations concerns. We both got out by the skin of our teeth. Steve was suckered in because one of Nygard’s “show me the money” traits was to appear as the savior for Sport and Bahamian athletes. Enough said there.

If I don’t mention it; clever Journalists behind me will.

I know Steve to be Roman Catholic. I don’t recall him changing his faith.

I said earlier he was an O’Jays fan.  He could group and place personalities in various stanzas in either of the hit songs- “Money! Money! Money!” and “The Backstabbers”.

Yet he called the world to heed the clarion call of his beloved O’ Jays classic. LOVE TRAIN

“People all over the world (everybody)“Join hands (join)“Start a love train, love train“People all over the world (all the world, now)“Join hands (love ride)“Start a love train (love ride), love train

“The next stop that we make will be England“Tell all the folks in Russia, and China, too“Don't you know that it's time to get on board“And let this train keep on riding, riding on through“Well, well.”

Whenever Steve was at the controls in PEACE RADIO, listeners knew to prepare to board “The Love Train.”

I figured out long, long ago that the song programming sheet for PEACE Radio was personal to Steve. He knew the power of the Culture to meet people in their hypocrisy and to challenge their better selves.

In the end when he resigned himself that political office, becoming the Member of Parliament for Fort Charlotte were not in his cards; he turned advisor and confidante to any politician who wanted to listen.

Steve died teaching and advising and counselling, drawn from his own experiences and life’s work. He gave a little of himself back to prepare the next Generation.

As a Tribune boy; he died with his dignity intact, “Being Bound to Swear to the Dogmas of No Master.”

The PEACE of which Steve identified and branded himself is now made clear. I know Steve’s faith has found a resting place in his God.

Looking back at when we were barely legal age teenagers; just starting out. Someone saved our life, trained and prepared us  and gave us enviable careers which in turn lead to us telling the story of the Bahamas and the Bahamian people.

Steve McKinney; after more than four decades; of pen and microphone, has signed off. What and excellent story and re-runs and re-broadcasts he leaves with us.

The End.

Earlin Williams is a Bahamian Journalist, Author Playwright and former Tribune Reporter.

His most recent novels; : “Mister Delilah” a crime thriller and “Glass Horses” a coming of age story are available on Amazon, Apple Books and select book stores.