Current On-air Staff
KOMO anchors Dan Lewis, Kathi Goertzen, and weather forecaster Steve Pool had been the third-longest running tenure out of any anchor team in America, having anchored KOMO News together from 1987 until 2009. The station's evening newscast has long been co-anchored by Lewis and Goertzen, and was praised by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as being the "Best First-String anchor unit in town.". Unfortunately, on-going struggles with illness left Goertzen unable to anchor the news. She continued to contribute special reports until her death in August 2012.
Dan Lewis came to KOMO in 1987 after working at WJLA in Washington, D.C., replacing retiring news anchor Jim Harriott. In 1993, he became the first reporter to interview then-president Bill Clinton following the inauguration ceremony . The interview was conducted at the White House. On October 1, 2007, KOMO celebrated Dan Lewis' 20 year tenure with KOMO with a five-minute long tribute.
Kathi Goertzen joined KOMO-TV just after the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980, fresh from Washington State University. In 1981, Goertzen became a general assignment reporter, and took weekend news anchoring duties from Kerry Brock in 1982. In 1984, she became the female co-anchor for the weeknight editions of "KOMO 4 News" alongside Jim Harriott. In 1989, she was the first American local TV news reporter to broadcast live from Germany as the Berlin Wall came down. Her broadcasts originated at the Brandenburg Gate from what was then known as "West Berlin." After a three-year absence from the late-night newscasts, she returned to KOMO on January 3, 2007. After suffering from a type of meningioma, a noncancerous tumor that grows on the brain stem that affects speech and the ability to swallow, she left/returned in 2008, and left/returned in 2009 after a few surgeries. The surgeries partially paralyzed the right side of her face, resulting in difficulty blinking her right eye. On August 13, 2012, Goertzen passed away at the age of 54.
Weatherman Steve Pool has been at KOMO since 1977, starting out as KOMO's lead science reporter. In 2006, he co-wrote a book called "Somewhere I Was Right: Why Northwest Weather is So Predictably Unpredictable" with KOMO-TV producer Scott Sistek. Steve Pool also has a column titled "Ask Steve" in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Additionally, Pool substituted a number of times as the Good Morning America weather anchor.
Read more about this topic: KOMO-TV, News Operation
Famous quotes containing the words current and/or staff:
“It is a quite remarkable fact that the great religions of the most civilized peoples are more deeply fraught with sadness than the simpler beliefs of earlier societies. This certainly does not mean that the current of pessimism is eventually to submerge the other, but it proves that it does not lose ground and that it does not seem destined to disappear.”
—Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)
“Each one threw down his staff, and they became snakes; but Aaron’s staff swallowed up theirs.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 7:12.