Tony Zappone (born October 9, 1947 in Tampa, Florida) began his career in journalism at age 14 as a freelance photographer with The Tampa Tribune, paid at the rate of three dollars per published news photo.
Photographed JFK four days before assassination
In 1963, he photographed President John F. Kennedy during a presidential visit to Tampa just four days before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Nine months later, he presented the slain President's brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, with pictures he had taken that day which were accepted for public display at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. Several of his photos showing the last time Secret Service Agents were posted at the rear of the presidential limousine were entered as exhibits during The Warren Commission's investigation into the Kennedy Assassination and are still used today in Secret Service training.
Youngest to cover Democratic Convention
At age 16, Zappone was the youngest credentialed photographer to cover the 1964 Democratic National Convention at the original Atlantic City Convention Center. There, he was interviewed before a nationwide television audience by NBC News Correspondents John Chancellor and Frank McGee.
Television career emerges
Early in his career he photographed news events for the Associated Press and United Press International. At that time, the wire services paid stringers a whopping five dollars per picture transmitted to members across the nation. His spot news and feature pictures submitted for use by the Tampa morning and afternoon papers were often picked up by the services. It was not unusual for his better photos to appear on the front pages of dozens of big-city newspapers on the same day.
At age 17, after a brief stint as junior news hound for WTVT-TV using a borrowed World War II Bell and Howell 16mm camera, he began shooting news film for Tampa television station WFLA-TV. At that time (1965), the going rate paid to stringers by TV news departments was fifty cents per foot of film used on a newscast (eighteen feet equaled the average 30-second story.) After twelve years at WFLA-TV, he would return to WTVT-TV as a news correspondent. At 18, he filmed the aftermath of a devastating tornado which ripped through a section of North Tampa (Carrollwood) for NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report, the highest-rated evening news report of that time.
Starting a university newspaper
During summer vacations from his studies in Political Science and Mass Communication at The University of South Florida Zappone worked as a reporter/photographer with The Philadelphia Bulletin. He was also an intern in the news department at WCAU-TV, Philadelphia, working alongside television news legend John Facenda. He was a founding staff member (photographer and reporter) of The Oracle, the groundbreaking University of South Florida campus newspaper which printed its first issue September 6, 1966. In its first year, the publication won two National Pacemaker Awards given by the Associated Collegiate Press (ACP) for excellence in college journalism and was named to the ACP Hall of Fame in 1989.
Chance meeting with ambassador to Britain
During late 1969 and early in 1970 while in military training at Pensacola, Florida, Zappone was a part time news and feature photographer for the Pensacola News and the Pensacola Journal (now combined as the Pensacola News Journal) under special arrangement. From 1970-71, Zappone served in the U.S. Navy as part of the Armed Forces Courier Service (ARFCOS), now the Defense Courier Service. He was assigned to the Office of the Defense Attaché, Embassy of the United States in London, and the U.S. Naval Forces Europe command in Naples, Italy.
In London, he befriended then U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom Walter H. Annenberg, founder of TV Guide and former owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, who took him under his wings and cleared a path for his advancement in the print and broadcast journalism fields. Zappone also performed functions in Europe during this time for the National Security Agency, headquartered in Fort George G. Meade, Maryland.
Assignments over time
Over the years, he has been: a newspaper editor; television news correspondent; a stringer correspondent for the former Satellite Network News (SNN) and later Cable News Network (CNN); a traffic reporter for WFLA (AM), working with local broadcast icon Jack Harris; an advertising executive; a university lecturer; a real estate investor and manager; and is currently a marketing, communications and real estate consultant based in Tampa.