Phill Brooks
Besides being the statehouse correspondent for KMOX Radio, Phill Brooks is a member of the faculty of the Missouri School of Journalism. He is director of the school’s State Government Reporting Program, supervising journalism students in print, broadcast and new media who are covering statehouse issues and activities.
He has won numerous regional and national awards for his statehouse reporting and investigative documentaries.
Brooks holds both a graduate and undergraduate journalism degree from the University of Missouri. His graduate studies concentrated on public administration and political science.
He started as a broadcast editor and reporter for the Time-Life converged broadcast newsroom in Denver, Col. and later covered the early days of Watergate and the Presidential campaign of Richard Nixon as a Congressional reporter for NPR before joining the MU faculty.
With more than three decades of Missouri statehouse reporting experience, Brooks is the senior member of the Missouri statehouse press corps.
He holds dual faculty appointments with the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain and the International School of Media and Entertainment Studies in New Dehli, India.
A third generation Californian, his most fervent hobbies remain focused on the open spaces of the west — skiing, snow mobiling and climbing (although climbing has ceased as age and injuries have developed wisdom about the foolishness and risks entailed from putting oneself on the sides of mountains).
Brooks has spent the last ten years assisting journalists in professional-training efforts in emerging and re-emerging democracies. He was the first Missouri School of Journalism faculty member to work in Eastern and Central Europe after the collapse of Soviet domination.
Brooks is a professionally trained computer programmer. He has developed journalism, newsroom and multimedia applications going back to the days of the original PC (yes, he has and still can program in assembly). He designed, wrote the enabling programs and implemented the world’s first micro-computer newsroom system used by a daily newspaper. He continues programming and consulting on an ad-hoc basis.
He and Lori, his wife since their college days, are the proud servants of several Abyssinian cats, in order of age: Leah, Misty, Monkey, Snoopy and Lucy. No, the Brooks were not so foolish as to choose five Abbys (this is a breed active and crazy enough that just one keeps you busy). Rather, some were inherited.
