Longtime broadcast journalist and news anchor Bill Kurtis says “the glory days have returned” for reporting.
“I think that the reporters are better educated than they ever have been. What happened is that the schools have caught up with the convergence idea: radio, television, writing and other jobs that you can take, because there are so many kids who want to get into journalism or broadcasting,” Kurtis told David Axelrod on The Axe Files, a podcast from The University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN.
Kurtis studied law but journalism seemed to follow him wherever he went: from his first job at a radio station at age 16 to reporting on a deadly tornado in Kansas on the local TV station’s 6 o’clock news. It was a gift other people noticed, including the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun.
“He said, ‘You have the ability to make these things interesting.’ And it’s the voice, yes, but it’s also telling a story,” Kurtis said.
“Some of the leading defense attorneys will say that in their closing arguments, they try to be like a 6 o’clock anchor, in which you condense and tell (a story) either chronologically or really interesting so that the jury remembers.”
Eventually, Kurtis made the transition from law to broadcast TV and then began his own production company, Kurtis Productions. His company produces “American Greed,” a television documentary series that explores white-collar crime.
Another “hot button” documentary topic for Kurtis: climate change.
“The strategy of the big economic giants, oil companies and others who don’t necessarily want to cut back on their emissions is to find a scientist that happens to be a denier and fund him and support that,” he said. “It’s the same strategy that was used for cigarettes.”
