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Adam Harrington, cbs2chicago.com
CHICAGO (CBS) ― Former CBS 2 news anchors Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson are remembered fondly by many Chicagoans, and some say they redefined local news – both in Chicago and on a national scale.

Kurtis and Jacobson, who gained widespread popularity as the anchors of CBS 2's 10 p.m. news in the 1970s and '80s, got back together on Wednesday night to talk about their time working together, and current issues affecting the media. They spoke with Steve Edwards of Chicago Public Radio as part of the "Chicago Treasures" series on famous local figures, at the Chicago History Museum.


The 10 O'clock News
Kurtis and Jacobson each began their Chicago broadcast careers as reporters for CBS 2 in the 1960s. Both left after a few years – Kurtis to become a CBS network correspondent in Los Angeles and Jacobson to be a commentator at another local station.

But in 1973, then-CBS 2 News Director Van Gordon Sauter lured them both back to anchor a revamped 10 p.m. newscast, broadcast directly from CBS 2's newsroom and featuring state-of-the-art technology that could be found at few other stations.

"We were on top of the world," Jacobson said. "One of the reasons it worked so well is because we were having so much fun with it. They didn't have that kind of electronic reporting in those days. This was 1973."

Most notably, CBS 2 became the first station to use the mini-cam, which replaced cumbersome film cameras and made for easy live shots and spot news coverage. The mini-cam gained such notoriety that when it was stolen on one occasion, it became front page news, Kurtis and Jacobson said.

The station was also an early pioneer of radio frequency technology to show live video from helicopters, they said.

The newscast also moved away from the trend of relying on newspapers for story selection, focusing instead on breaking news stories on their own, Kurtis and Jacobson added.

"Walter was breaking stories all the time, and I formed a unit called Focus Unit. It was an investigative reporting unit," Kurtis said.

Meanwhile, Jacobson held double-duty as a commentator. He recalled walking from the anchor desk to another desk across CBS 2's newsroom and taking off his suit jacket when he did his nightly "Perspective."

Kurtis and Jacobson's run as co-anchors of CBS 2's 10 p.m. news lasted from 1973 until 1989 – except for a three-year period when Kurtis anchored the CBS Morning News, a predecessor to the Early Show, in New York.



Memorable Stories
When asked about the story he remembered as the best, Kurtis pointed out his 1978 CBS 2 documentary on the military herbicide Agent Orange and its suspected toxic effects, which touched off a federal investigation and national media attention.

Jacobson said his favorite story was the Council Wars of the 1980s, between Mayor Harold Washington and a bloc of 29 aldermen led by Ed Vrdolyak (10th), who fought the mayor's initiatives until redistricting gave Washington a majority in the City Council.

But among the interviews he has conducted, Jacobson pointed out a more chilling encounter with serial killer John Wayne Gacy on Death Row.

"I spent a year working John Wayne Gacy, because I was a Cubs batboy and he was a Cubs fan," Jacobson said.

Jacobson said when he finally got the interview with Gacy, the serial killer "showed me with a pencil" how he strangled boys and men. Gacy was executed in 1994 for killing 33 people and burying many of their bodies in a crawlspace under his house.

Kurtis said his favorite interview was with artist Joan Miro, on the island of Mallorca off the coast of Spain, not long before Miro's sculpture on Washington Street downtown was unveiled in 1981.

"We go off and do (the interview) in (Miro's) studio, and it hadn't been opened for six months, and when they opened it, it was cold and dark and dusty, and we were walking on Miro's paintings that were on the floor; that had been discarded," Kurtis said.

Kurtis recalled that when he asked Miro what the artist wanted the people of Chicago to take away from his new sculpture, Miro – who spoke little English – replied, "I hope it tickles them right here," pointing to the center of his forehead.


The Media Today And Tomorrow
Kurtis and Jacobson said with the volume of information available and the ease at which a blogger or Web user can release information, a need exists for better organization of news resources and a focus on informing rather than entertaining.

"If you want to watch the news, you turn it on to learn something and to understand something," Jacobson said. "You don't turn it on to be entertained."

Jacobson said in the past, Chicago politics brought a sense of excitement to the news, in a city full of larger-than-life politicians and without the celebrities and world leaders found at the United Nations and Wall Street as in New York or in the Hollywood movie industry in Los Angeles.

But the theatrical nature of local politics has faded, Jacobson said.

"With the exception of (U.S. Attorney Patrick) Fitzgerald's attack on the system, politics aren't as they were before," he said.

In discussing the present-day information landscape, Kurtis said the massive influx of information that has come with the Internet and other technology has brought a need for someone or something that will separate out the valuable material.

"In many ways, what we need in journalism is a guide, and that guide is an editor who'll select the stories and have them delivered to you in the morning on your little device, whether it's hand-held or a computer," he said.

Further, Kurtis said he believes reporters need to resume their role as watchdogs.

"Our job, by definition of the Constitution – we are watchdogs on government," he said.

He pointed to the 1969 police raid in which Black Panthers leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed in Hampton's apartment. Examining the number of bullets fired into the apartment was not intended as a show of support of the Black Panthers over police and prosecutors, but as "a challenge to the system," Kurtis said.

Jacobson said his effectiveness as a commentator was helped by a "lack of respect for authority" that he's had since boyhood.

"What I was told to do, I tried to do the opposite," Jacobson said, adding that as a patrol boy in the city's Rogers Park neighborhood, "if I was told to stand on the corner, I would walk into the middle of the street to stop the cars."

But for his own legacy, Jacobson said he wanted to be remembered as someone who informed the public and brought an understanding to issues.

"I would say that I tried to inform and I was true to my ethics in the profession, and tried to be as objective that I could," and brought the public to think critically, Jacobson said.

Kurtis said when people talk about his legacy, "I would like for them to say, 'He was an honest man who told a good story.'"

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