Dave Ross is host of Westwood One’s two-minute feature Dave Ross airing, daily, Monday to Saturday.  In a no-nonsense world that demands some nonsense, Dave Ross’s wry take on current events makes perfect sense.

After four years as a reporter at WSB in Atlanta, Ross joined KIRO Radio in 1978 as a news anchor, and started hosting his own talk show in 1987.  Since then he has become famous not only as head of the Eastlake Avenue Crusaders for Common Sense, navigating a relentlessly moderate political course in a sea of extremists, but he is also the only talk show host since Arthur Godfrey with the nerve to sing on the air despite modest musical gifts.

On-air crusades have included: RossPAC, Dave’s political action committee which asks people to send a buck to members of Congress who don’t accept gifts from lobbyists; the Floppyright which would allow people to copyright any personal data that is sold to marketing firms; Common Sense Ammo Control, a failed state initiative that would have protected the right to keep and bear arms but at the same time confined the sale of ammunition to state ammo stores staffed by finicky clerks; and Common Sense Ballpark Funding, which argued that if Major League Baseball needs tax money to survive, then it should be classified as a charity, and we should all start donating money just as if it were PBS.

Before becoming talk show host, Dave worked as a reporter.  His assignments have included the Pope’s trip to Great Britain and Argentina in 1982, China in 1984, Rajneeshpuram (Oregon) in 1984, the Soviet Union in 1987, Berlin and Czechoslovakia in 1989, the Middle East in 1990 during the Gulf War, Moscow in 1991 during the putsch and again in 1992, the LA riots, and the most hazardous assignment of all, the opening of the 104th Congress.  Most recently, Ross covered the tragedy at the World Trade Center in New York City.

Since 1983 he has hosted and produced over 4200 episodes of Chip Talk, a daily radio report on computers syndicated by the Associated Press, did TV commentaries for C-NET’s inaugural season on the USA Cable Network, does a twice-daily political commentary for CBS Radio, and is Charles Osgood’s fill-in on The Osgood File. He also writes occasional columns for Newsday.

Dave’s other love is Gilbert & Sullivan, and you’ll find him most summers playing the comic baritone in the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s summer productions at Seattle Center.  In the summer of  ’96 he performed at the International Gilbert & Sullivan festival in Buxton, England, and will return as “The Grand Duke” in 1999.

He has served as a trustee of the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society, an elected member of the St. Monica’s school commission, a member of the Eastside Board of Catholic Community Services, and is on the steering committee of the Campaign 5000 African-American community development bank.

He and his wife Patti have two daughters, Caitlin and Emilie.