A staple of the Wisconsin journalism community, a friend, and a brother has sadly passed.
Sean O’Flaherty has been a journalist for more than 50 years. He graduated from UW-Madison with a journalism degree in 1971. Then he joined the employer he would stay with for the rest of his career, at Scripps News Milwaukee. He spent 53 years working there.
On July 26, 2024, Sean died after a courageous battle with multiple myeloma cancer. He was 74.
Sean was born on Sept. 1, 1949, in Orange, New Jersey, and he grew up in Newark.
Since childhood, he was determined to be a journalist. It all started when he received an audio recorder early on. He began conducting interviews with anyone he could find who would join him. Eventually, Sean got his hands on a camera.
“He got a camera before our parents got a camera. He took a trillion, billion pictures of me,” his brother Dan O’Flaherty said.
Sean would tinker on television sets by taking them apart to see what was inside. Later in high school, he filmed games for the football and baseball teams which was an innovation at the prep sports level for that time.
“He recorded everything. He did interviews. He did this sort of thing. Everything was recorded,” Dan O’Flaherty said.
He started studying journalism at UW-Madison in 1967 and graduated in 1971. During that time, he would file Madison-related reports for his station TMJ4 News — also now known as Scripps News Milwaukee. Upon graduation, he began his full-time job at the station and never got another job.
“Who needs Google when you have Sean O’Flaherty?” Madison Goldbeck, a former employee, and Sean’s friend, said.
“(He) was just a guy that was so excited about journalism and television,” Andrew Triplett, a former photographer, and Sean’s friend, said.
Sean began as an on-camera reporter but transitioned into a behind-the-scenes role. He mastered nearly every technical operation at the station.
Scripps News Milwaukee.
