Delivering a paper is something you might imagine seeing a kid do in a Norman Rockwell painting. I doubt Rockwell ever depicted a kid delivering the newspaper with a gun pointed at him.
“I was collecting subscription fees for the paper at a house when the owner pulled a gun on me. I still have no idea why. I stopped delivering to that house and gave up the whole route after that.”
Bret Burkhart, news anchor for KCBS in San Francisco, spent years delivering the San Jose Mercury News, and he’d been an avid reader of the same paper for many years.
“I had to find a way to get my hands on the ink,” he said. “Reading the headlines every morning growing up, fed my interest in news. I got it all from the Mercury.” In the evening Burkhart would watch television with his family for the latest news, a true addict in the making.
“In those days we had to buy the papers from the publisher and sell them on our own. Mark them up so we could make some money.”
Some belligerent customers were behind in payments by as much as a few months.
“When they were that delinquent I’d get a little revenge by setting their paper down on their doorstep without a rubber band. If the wind took the paper flying, so be it.” That’ll show ‘em.
For nearly a year Burkhart has been anchoring the news at KCBS. Growing up, Burkhart said they weren’t big talkers at the dinner table, politics came up on occasion.
“My father was a registered Republican in the 80s, and I became aware of his political beliefs,” he said.
He’s covered major events in California for a long while. Throughout his life in California, Burkhart said he’s seen the extremes in weather, the big storms, and the recent fires. In 1992 he covered fires in Happy Valley, California, where 100 homes were destroyed. He said that was a huge number of homes for that time.
“Now, it’s not uncommon where fire will destroy hundreds of homes,” Burkhart said. “You drive through wine country and witness the devastation. They’re still rebuilding from 20 years ago.”
Through his experiences as a reporter, Burkhart said the topic of water has ended many political careers in California.
“That’s been one of the biggest issues for a long time for many reasons,” he explained. “But I’ll say this recent drought is the worst I’ve lived through.”
Burkhart covered Arnold Schwarzenneger’s first Big Five meeting shortly after he was inaugurated. A Big Five meeting is an informal institution of the California state government.
“I asked the first question that day,” Burkhart explained. “I asked him what he thought of John Burton, the pro-tempore of the Senate at that time.”
Burton may or may not have been amused, still he turned to Burkhart and flipped him off right in the middle of the news conference. Burkhart said the rest in attendance broke out in laughter.
“Burton had a sailor-mouth and could be a crusty old guy. He was generally nice to me, but he was definitely a ‘get the hell off my lawn kind of codger. We did a lot of one-on-one interviews during our time together.”
Burkhart worked at several radio stations while taking broadcasting and journalism classes. Early experience at Newstalk 1060 KPAY helped him land at another newstalk powerhouse when he graduated, KFBK Radio, where he reported on everything from fires to floods to politics at the State Capitol.
In his career he’s worked in various newsrooms. Some with a lot of co-workers, others manned with a skeleton crew.
“When I was at KGO I went through so many cuts,” Burkhart said. “Every time the station cut staff I had to pick up the slack. There was almost nobody there. I missed working with a team.”
Toward the end of his time at KGO, they were so short handed, Burkhart was forced to write his stories at night for use the next morning.
“I was my own assignment editor, producer, and it was such a pressure cooker. I never realized how stressed I actually was. It was bare bones. My contract was expiring, and I was so spent doing so many different jobs.”
At the same time his father was ill. He passed away last March. This is about the same time Burkhart’s contract negotiations were ongoing his father entered hospice.
“He knew I’d been looking for a job. My dad was my biggest fan,” Burkhart said. “When I worked in Chico, CA, I did a story about a prison break. The signal was close enough for my dad to hear it. He went out to the car with his tape recorder and taped my story over the car radio. My father was the best man at my wedding.”
Burkhart grew up in Saratoga, California, and has always been a southern Bay Area kid. He found the time to hit the ocean now and again.
“I surfed in high school. There were some good spots Near Santa Cruz. I rode a skateboard, but that was the culture at the time. My neighbors built skateboard ramps. The last time I got on a skateboard was back then when I was still in shape.”
Burkhart is also a pilot, a hobby that proves to be both fun and useful.
He discovered his love of flying after a surprise flight.
“I was making a memorial video for a friend,” Burkhart explained. “We finished early and he asked if I wanted to go to lunch. After I said I did, he drove us to the airport. We hopped in his plane and he flew us somewhere for lunch. That’s what sparked my love of flying.”
Burhart said some instructors have a way to hook you during your first lesson.
They might ask you to take the yoke during take off.
“The pilot handles the throttle and keeps the plane at 65 knots. When you leave the ground at that moment with your hand on the yoke, it’s magical. I was doing something I knew I loved. You get the feeling of being a pilot right away.”
The world is beautiful from up there, Burkhart said.
“I now donate charity flights for local school districts. I’ll take them on a tour of the Bay. I show them Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, Half Moon Bay. Then I take them to lunch.”
He flies a Cessna 172 and said all flying is built on redundancy.
“You have a failure in one mechanism, you have a backup,” Burkhart said. “Wings are designed to fly through turbulence. As long as you’re at the right speed you’re okay.”
In 2011 Burkhart was covering a story about a Tsunami in California. The station chartered a plane, but he wasn’t the pilot.
“We’d just flown through a rainstorm,” he explained. “I was staring at the strut and I started to see icing. That can lead to a tragic situation. If it ices up, it changes the dynamic of the wing and compromises lift.”
He described how the icing started to increase and worsen.
“I suggested we find the nearest place to land. During our descent we popped out of the clouds and I noticed the ice was starting to melt.”
While the landscape is beautiful from the sky, Burkhart can see first-hand the effects of global warming.
“I fly over reservoirs and am stunned when I see the dry conditions,” he said. “The boat docks are football fields away from the waterline. It’s scary.”
In life, he’s an optimist by nature, a self-described Pollyanna. When it comes to news, he said he’s a little more jaded, equipped with a built-in BS detector.
“I feel like I’ve heard it all in politics,” Burkhart said. “We do so many interviews in this business. We know when we’re getting a bad answer. I should know. I used to interview house speaker Kevin McCarthy before he lost his mind.”
Burkhart said he interviewed a California politician and asked about California’s goal to be all EV by 2035. The guy said the governor was being unconstitutional.
“He was just trying to bash the governor,” Burkhart said. “I asked him how it was unconstitutional, but he wouldn’t say. Just wanted to promote his own viewpoints.”
There’s a lot of that going around these days.
Jim Cryns writes features for Barrett News Media. He has spent time in radio as a reporter for WTMJ, and has served as an author and former writer for the Milwaukee Brewers. To touch base or pick up a copy of his new book: Talk To Me – Profiles on News Talkers and Media Leaders From Top 50 Markets, log on to Amazon or shoot Jim an email at jimcryns3_zhd@indeedemail.com.
