In Santa Rosa, California there’s an ice rink once owned by cartoonist Charles M. Shulz, the guy that gave us Charlie Brown. It’s the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, more commonly known as Snoopy’s Home Ice. Mike DeWald told me he’s been skating at Charlie Brown’s place since 2010.
“It’s the best part of my week,” said Mike DeWald. “I don’t know what triggered my wanting to play. I guess I just wanted to try it. I played street hockey as a kid. One weekend I just went to the hockey store. It’s a pricey sport to get into, it all could have been a terrible mistake,” he joked. “Now I’m there three times a week. It’s sort of my way to unplug. You get away from everything. Sixty minutes of not having to think on those days.”
DeWald is a reporter with the Bay Area all-news station KCBS.
A good chunk of his life was spent producing The Drive with Steve Jaxon on KSRO for 13 years on KSRO 1350-AM/103.5-FM. 13 years. That’s longer than most human marriages. Only Gray Wolves, Macaroni Penguins, and sandhill cranes tend to take their relationships as seriously.
Jaxon was very understanding of the move and DeWald’s need to take on a challenge. He probably figured it was time for the kid to spread his wings.
“I think Steve had a sense it would happen at some point,” DeWald explained. “It was tough for both of us.
They were on the same wavelength most of the time. That’s even more surprising when you consider DeWald was just 19 when he started working with Jaxon. They’re still friends and spend time together.
The fact DeWald went into any form of broadcasting may have surprised people who knew him when he was a kid.
“Early on I was the shyest person you ever met,” DeWald said. “You remember the shyest person you ever met? Well, I was shyer than that guy.
“I learned a lot from Steve. I learned about delivery, timing, and how to be comfortable with myself. Allow me to have my personality.”
DeWald said Jaxon had been a fixture in Sonoma County for a long time. He started as a music guy and worked at a bunch of stations from East Lansing to Austin.
“He had a vision of what he wanted to do,” DeWald said of Jaxon. “He wanted a heavy dose of lifestyle. He wanted artists, musicians, and people who did interesting things. Not unlike a late-night television show, only on radio.”
The show had a very exciting feel to it. They fed off each other’s energy. “To some extent, it was like, ‘let’s see how far we can push this.; We’ve crammed bands into the small studio space.”
I’m not sure if this is legal, but Jaxon once had a camel come into his studio. It was broadcast live on Facebook.
“That’s one of the funniest things I can remember,” DeWald said. “It was so messy. The camel destroyed the hallway, with mud everywhere. Our boss was on vacation and had the proverbial house to ourselves. If he knew we had a camel in the studio, we’d have been dead.”
It was so messy DeWald had to call a cleaning service and told them he had an emergency.
“They showed up at the station the next morning and I was already there.”
Jaxon may or may not have thrown DeWald under the camel, so to speak. The reason the camel was there in the first place is that a local ranch raises therapy animals.
“Every couple of months we’d have somebody from the ranch to talk about an animal on the air,” DeWald said. “A lot of times it was a serval cat. We had a skunk one time that had been de-skunked. We’d learn about the animal.”
DeWald said a regular guest on Jaxon’s show was comedian Paul Mecurio. He’s the guy who warms up the audience for Late Night With Stephen Colbert on CBS. He does the same for The Daily Show on Comedy Central.
“We had Paul on the show a ton of times,’ DeWald explained.
Mecurio was able to get DeWald tickets to see Colbert’s show in New York City. He said it was unbelievable to see all the show action in real-time.
“It’s much smaller than you’d think,” he said. The desk was small. The chairs were small. Even Stephen Colbert looked small.”
Mecurio warmed up audiences for Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.
“Paul brought us backstage after the show and we were going out for drinks,” DeWald explained. “He had to do something and told us to wait in the kitchen and that he’d be right back. We didn’t know what to do. So we were just standing around.”
Suddenly, in walks Jon Stewart, just milling around backstage doing whatever Jon Stewart does after a show.
“He was so cool,” DeWald remarked. “Jon Stewart is the most down-to-earth guy you could imagine. We didn’t want to bother him, but he approached us and started talking. He was talking about Paul and his kids. It was just one of those moments when you see yourself outside your body, hovering around.”
DeWald started in radio at 17 as a high school junior at Santa Rosa’s active rock station KXFX before moving to the News/Talk side, producing several shows on KSRO.
He scored an internship at 101.7 The Fox.
“I just jumped in,” DeWald said. “I excelled at the technical aspects of the job. Then a strange meeting. When the internship was completed, the first-morning show guy DeWald worked with escorted him to the GM’s office.
“I wasn’t sure where this was going,” DeWald said. He couldn’t be fired as technically wasn’t an employee. He also knew he performed his job well during his internship.
It was a conversation, not a formal interview. A get-to-know-you talk, as DeWald described it.
“I didn’t know what a job in radio entailed at the time, so it wasn’t my greatest performance,” recalled DeWald. “I think I made just enough of impression to keep my foot in the door for a call for an opening a year later.”
DeWald started with a part-time job opening at KCBS Radio in early 2020. It was a lot of work on the production side like scheduling interviews. After nine months they started letting him cover press conferences, and mold that coverage into a wrap.
“I was lucky because one of the reporters, Holly Quan, took me under her wing,’ DeWald explained. “She said ‘do this, try this, and don’t do that.’ She was an incredible mentor. I tried to learn as much as I could. I’ve worked with so many great reporters and editors, I tried to learn something from all of them.”
Some stories jump out at you when written and delivered in a special way. DeWald said he tried to key in on what made each reporter he worked with successful, and tried to harness it to form his own style and identity.
“Some reporters are very good at getting to the heart of the story,” DeWald explained. “They seem to discover what’s new and important and hone in on that.”
He described how some reporters excel at working with natural sound. Some can build an atmosphere and add it to the story. It could be a car door slamming, birds chirping, or dishes crashing.
“The really good reporters can be both informative and authoritative, but also conversational,” DeWald said. “They can present that story memorably. If you lined up three stories and wanted to pick the best, it’s probably going to be the one that stuck with you.”
The reporting role at KCBS Radio turned full time in 2022, with DeWald taking on a combination of AM Drive and weekend air shifts.
While many journalism graduates see themselves as the next big media personality, DeWald had no such aspirations. During his junior year in high school, he loved the production side of music. He thought the producer job was the coolest thing in the world. He loved the idea of creating things. Running a board. Engineering.
The first show DeWald produced was The David Glass Show in 2006. Glass was all about politics.
“A brilliant guy and thorough interviewer,” DeWald said. “He prepped like a madman and gave me a lot of exposure to the news side.”
After graduating from Sonoma State in 2010 with an economics degree.
“I think it has all just played out the way it was supposed to. I’m glad it went this way. I just hope it keeps going and I’m thankful for my start.
A pinch-me moment for DeWald happened when an interview had been arranged with President Jimmy Carter, who was on a book tour.
It was huge for the station but DeWald may have been too young at the time to understand how big it was. Didn’t appreciate the moment.
“I remember whoever was on the other line saying, ‘Hold for the President.’ I still get chills from that.”
He said President Carter was kind and generous with his time.
“I think he gave us 15 minutes,” DeWald said. “He didn’t care, we were just a smaller station. He took his time with us. Carter is a man among men.”
DeWald said reporting in the field has forced him out of other comfort zones and perhaps made him more outgoing, especially during 2017’s Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa, at the time the most destructive fire in California’s history. He’s a man truly enamored with the power of radio.
“I go out to a fire zone and describe what I’m seeing,” he said, “but to have it be the devastation of your own community, it’s incredibly difficult.”
During a fire, DeWald got calls from stations all over the world hungry for a first-hand account. He got calls from Germany. From England.
“Here I was doing all these live hits with Europe. I didn’t have an official template to rely on and was learning on the fly. After a few of those types of stories, I think I developed a strong foundation of reporting, thankfully I was able to bring it full circle at KCBS.”
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.
