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Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
Beth, welcome aboard to the show. So happy to have you here today.
Speaker 2:Hi. Thank you for having me. I'm honored.
Speaker 1:So would it be terribly insulting to call you a little bit of a dying breed as a journalist?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay. Tell us more about why the answer is yes. Are journalists a dying breed or aren't they?
Speaker 2:Are they a dying breed?
Speaker 1:And let me qualify this question and say an investigative journalist.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yeah. I was definitely an investigative journalist. I would say journalism overall is not necessarily a dying breed. It's an evolving one.
Speaker 2:I think how journalism is perceived and carried out now is much differently than what it was, you know, back in the day of the old legacy media because, you know, podcasting, is streaming services. So and the access to cell phones and we can all go live on our cell phones from how many different platforms now. Right? So anyone almost with a cell phone can call themselves a journalist if they wanted, and it's kinda perceived that way. So I think it's just a perception how things have changed and evolved, and something good, I think, as a result of this evolution is things are much less rigid, you know, and structured, and you get to have more conversations and do these interactive interviews without having to keep something like our stories on the news.
Speaker 2:We're always a minute thirty. That's not a lot of time to pack a lot of information in and, you know, people used to viewers would get upset at why you can't you tell us the whole story? Well, because I've got about 30 to tell you, you know? And so with friends, I used to say, Hey, sit down and start to read something and I'll set my stopwatch and I'd stop them at one minute, thirty seconds. And they're like, I'm only on paragraph two.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, welcome to my world. You know? So think it's just changed and evolved, and it just about anybody can almost call themselves a journalist now because of cell phones.
Speaker 1:But let me let me let me kind of zoom into my question, specifically investigative. So my, I'll get on my soapbox here for a second and I'll say why I think investigative journalists are a dying breed. We used to have ads that were paid by, you know, newspapers were getting that money and newspapers did investigative journalism and then Craigslist came along and then, you know, that took a lot of that revenue away. Google came along, Yahoo came along, now AI is coming along. It really hurt the revenue newspapers and we're seeing today a lot less investigative journalism than we did in the past.
Speaker 1:My concern is that that's kind of one of the four, one of the unofficial, let's say, arm of a democracy. And it concerns me a little bit. So when I kind of gave that tongue in cheek question, I was fishing for your perspective.
Speaker 2:You know, interesting you asked that last night at dinner. Had this very conversation with a group of friends because they were telling me they have a hard time watching the news now because they're like, you know, it just seems like people take what someone else says at face value, and you can't. And I was certainly not known for that. You know, I was probably a good cross of old school journalism and new school technology because Tell
Speaker 1:us what that for for our audience, tell us what does what that means, old school versus new school.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So old school, building context, building rapport, learning how to dig for information because that's a skill into itself. Learning how to access the information gatekeepers of various agencies, whether it's the FBI or the IRS or your local school board, learning how to find documents, where to go in the court systems. Every state has something different. Or the federal system, obtaining documents, FOIAs, freedom of information acts.
Speaker 2:So I kind of grew up in that environment of we, the reporter, ask hard questions. That's our job is to hold people accountable, ask hard questions, you know, truth to power, if you will. So I grew up in that environment. And then, you know, as you get along in your career and you get ten years under your belt or twenty years, and now we entered the age of the Internet, you know, in the early two thousands and then online social media, that sort of thing. You have to learn how to navigate that technology, which is whipper fast.
Speaker 2:You know, we went from having initially when I started in news, we had a couple of deadlines a day. Maybe you had the noon newscast, the five, the six, maybe the 10PM. Well, with the advent of the Internet and social media, you know, you have almost hourly deadlines. Or as soon as you're at a press conference, you gotta start pumping that out on your phone and on social medias. And that takes away something I think is very valuable.
Speaker 2:News gathering takes a little bit of time. And if you wanna vet the information and make sure it's accurate, and you have to in this day and age, you cannot take anything anyone says or prints or reports at face value. You have to vet it and, and dig through the facts and verify that these certain things are true or not true. And so that takes its own kind of time and technology as well. And since you asked investigative specifically, investigations by their very nature take time.
Speaker 2:Well, in the media, we don't always have a lot of time. You know, it's feed the monster twenty four seven, go, go, go, go, go, go. So you move as fast as you can and you learn to become very efficient because of the new technology. But still I had some of the old school in me of like, hold on, you know, I've been around the block. I know a thing or two.
Speaker 2:Wait a minute. That's, I don't think that's entirely exactly true. And so to start digging down and, verifying information or debunking information, that takes some time. And I think that's maybe one reason why investigative journalism is prevalent as it used to be because it's extremely time consuming. And, you know, all media agencies, they've gotta they've gotta turn stuff fast, and we call it the content king.
Speaker 2:You gotta keep that content coming. But to verify the content, that takes time. Some people have teams of researchers that can do it, but usually that's at the network level or extremely high. But you look at kind of our everyday average media or in your market, your cities, wherever you live, it's gonna be up to the journalist to, you know, do all of that. And also digging for information and learning how to make the contacts, the appropriate contacts that can get you the accurate information.
Speaker 2:And there's a difference between being right and being accurate. Right? And so if you want accurate information, that takes some time to go through the information gatekeepers to get that, amass it, put it together. And then some people are quite honestly afraid of investigative journalism. They don't wanna be asked hard questions.
Speaker 2:You know? So they'll duck and dodge a little bit. Where I came in old school versus new school. You know, I hear someone say, no, I'm not gonna answer that. And I'm like, you're an elected official.
Speaker 2:You know, you you are elected to answer this question, to represent the people too. You're not gonna get off that easy. And, you know, there's a we can look at the climate right now with media. There's an air of intimidation, you know, and some people will shy away of investigative reporting because of that. They don't wanna deal with all that fallout, the intimidation, the threats, the, you know, the lawsuits.
Speaker 2:People will sue over anything anymore. You know? It almost becomes you're wrong until you prove yourself right in journalism. So, you know, all of that can take a toll. Most of the stations I worked at still have investigative units, which I'm thrilled about because, you know, never do I want someone to take a press release from some office and be like, hey, that's news.
Speaker 2:No. That's a start, but that is not news. You know, it's up to you to go in there and find the news. And that takes also some experience and some strength, you know, because you get pushback. People don't always wanna answer questions about why they did this or spent that or, you know, decide to, all throughout something, defund the police.
Speaker 2:I have a great example of that. You know, back in Minneapolis right after George Floyd, and that happened on my watch. I was working that there was this big community meeting, probably tens of thousands of people at a park shortly after where the big defund the police, you know, movement came out of by the Minneapolis city council members. And, you know, they were standing up there, defund the police, defund the police, defund the police. Wherever you stand on that issue, up to you.
Speaker 2:But I'm like, as a journalist. Okay. So you want to do that? How laid out your public official. It is your job to tell us how you're going to defund the police.
Speaker 2:Right. Answer those questions. And I think that's where I was kind of a bridge between the two, because I just,
Speaker 1:This is a you're presenting though an incredibly difficult challenge, right, where you know you had a minute ninety in the quote unquote old days, nowadays it's sorry minute thirty, did you say minute ninety? Nowadays it's still ninety seconds, right? The shorts on Instagram, we're we're still in that paradigm. If anything, we're we're we're maybe worse off, I don't know because how many channels did you add on the TV? Sure, men like to flicker between channels, but now it's everyone, it's all the time, maybe you get, I don't know, three seconds before somebody will kind of swipe with their finger and then on the other end you're saying well you want to go deep and answer a question of it's not just a slogan, defund the police or whatever the slogan is.
Speaker 1:It's all it's about let's think about how we would do this. What's the reason? What's the logic? What's the pros and cons? How do you do that in ninety seconds?
Speaker 2:You become very efficient with your words when you're writing because you do just in in the time gets shorter a little bit, right? Because of attention spans, because if people don't hear what interests them pretty quickly, right? They swipe or delete or move on. And so you are very efficient with your words and how you write things, which is its own challenge as well as a journalist. Anyone who's ever sat down to start do some writing, you realize it takes exponentially longer than you think it will to write a story.
Speaker 2:Right? And so we have to be very efficient with our words. And there's a phrase I always keep in my head, and there's a poster on my wall. Words matter. You know?
Speaker 2:So you you just get very efficient with your words. And I also think it's important then to tell the viewers or the listeners, okay. We can't get everything in. So you know what? I mean, this is where the website's like a station website or newspaper website.
Speaker 2:You can tease to that. Like, okay, here's what we can give you now in this report on TV to learn more. If you want to know more, if you have more questions, will you tag it to interviews on the wherever you're working the media website? And so people can then sit down, watch something more in-depth if they want to. So we're able to give some headlines and a little bit of meat of this story, and then you give people another avenue to pursue more if they're interested in more.
Speaker 1:There's a challenge that some people think it's new with this fake news concept, but there's no such thing as fake news. We just changed the name. It's propaganda, right? It's just a different name for the same thing. So we've had this forever.
Speaker 1:Everybody has an agenda. Everybody has a bias. And those biases come across. Now my dad famously said, if you wanna actually know what happened on the news, you need to watch three different channels, each one with a different bias. And then maybe you can piece it together from all from all three.
Speaker 1:As a as two questions here. As a journalist, how do you kind of deal with the biases, your own and sometimes that are forced upon you by a certain channel or or media outlet? And then how do you deal with the biases of your audience?
Speaker 2:Boy, those are also great questions. Gotta tell you, Ari. Thank you for asking that honestly, because that was something I kind of grappled with these last probably five or ten years. Most importantly, last five years since the climate has changed everywhere, the biases. So I'll address that first.
Speaker 2:Like from my standpoint, know, I think a couple of things for me anyway, were a benefit for me in my career. I was born and grew up in LA, you know, so I was in a very diverse environment and nowhere special, nowhere ritzy, just normal neighborhood LA. My mom was a nurse, you know, just normal America. And so that's kind of how I grew up. And then we moved to Oklahoma when I was in junior high and my dad got transferred.
Speaker 2:And, that was a little bit of a culture shock and eye opening for me of like, okay, not everybody's been experienced, exposed and experienced all of this. Right. And, you know, my, my, my friends and my neighbors were all different flavors and colors and shapes and sizes. So that's what I know. So I think that was one advantage for me kind of going in.
Speaker 2:I just understand, and I appreciate everything in cultures and life and whatever. And then, you know, as I got into the business and got deeper into it, I'm like, okay, you know, I've lived in Missouri. I've lived in all over Texas, Philadelphia, you know, New York, all over Minnesota. And now I'm here in the Desert Southwest. So people are different in different areas, and they have different biases in different areas.
Speaker 2:When I moved from Philadelphia to Minnesota, and Minnesota is a wonderful place and, you know, fortune 500 companies, the people are smart. When I moved there in 2005, the crime was so minimal, You know? And I I come from Philly where there's 500 murders a year, and maybe in Minneapolis, there were 25. But coming from Philadelphia, which is a very diverse city. And then you move to Minnesota, and you're like, this is very not diverse.
Speaker 2:Okay. So you gotta kinda, you know, figure out how to operate in that terrain. You know, I'm gonna have to say, I don't think I have a lot of biases because I'm a pretty realistic person in just the nature of where I grew up. I've lived in a lot of cities and a lot of places where I was exposed to. So I think that's normal.
Speaker 2:Like just differences are normal. Diversity is normal. And I, so I think that gave me a little bit of an advantage in that area. Now dealing with others biases is another issue and a whole different, you know, whole different terrain and experience and borderline explosive, depending on the approach. You know, there are certain communities that are very media averse.
Speaker 2:There are communities that hate the media. And then, you know, some people think you have privilege or, you know, and I always let people know I don't have a dog in your fight. I am here just to tell your story or guess what? You invited me to come tell your story. You know?
Speaker 2:So let's go there. And people are entitled to their feelings and their opinions. When you're reporting a story and you're putting this together, though, I don't think bias has a place in its story, unless that is the story, unless whatever's going on. Unless that is the story, then you have to address that. I just don't think bias has a place in the story.
Speaker 2:Do people have agendas? You bet. And absolutely. It's, I'll just use law enforcement as an example, you know, law enforcement, when they would reach out to the media or contact would reach out to me with a story, they wanted to get out there maybe to teach somebody a lesson. Right.
Speaker 2:They have their agenda. I have my agenda because I've got to get information. I've got to get a bunch of news and I got to do it quickly, very quickly. So everybody, it would be disingenuous to say no one has an agenda. Everybody does.
Speaker 2:Cause we all have to get some things done every day. But you manage that. You balance that with experience. You learn how to do it. You know, does he come with it?
Speaker 2:Of course. I've been yelled at by the head of the NAACP, and I've been yelled at by white nationalists. You know, you will never make everyone happy all the time, but it is our job to walk that line as closely as you can of objectivity and not get involved, but report what you see, but also ask some hard questions. You know? And usually the pushback comes when you ask questions that people don't wanna answer.
Speaker 1:When you ask those questions that people don't want to answer, to a certain degree, you're creating a reputation for yourself as somebody who asks hard questions. And if that reputation gets out, maybe people will be afraid to talk with you. How do you balance the kind of like, I need to be unbiased, I need to create a counterweight so to speak to the opinion that's being presented. I need to show the other side to give the balanced reporting, but I also don't want to destroy relationships so I can't do my job. It's a really tricky balance line to kind of walk.
Speaker 2:It is tricky. And I can't say I always did it perfectly. I didn't. I've made many a mistake in my career. You know, once you get a few kerfuffles under your belt, you start to learn.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, okay, how are we gonna? But I, when you develop a reputation too, for some credibility and trustworthy, and I'm a pretty straight shooter and people get to know that very quickly with me. I also made it a point wherever I was living and working at the time to go sit down with the mayor, go sit down with, you know, city council members. We'd go have coffee meet with them.
Speaker 2:And I and I would tell them, I always whenever I started at a station new, I'm like, me a couple of weeks. Let me go make the rounds and meet everybody and the decision makers and information keepers. And I will let them know. I don't have an agenda. I am a reporter and I will do my job just like you too will do your job, but I don't have an agenda.
Speaker 2:And, you know, we're gonna we're gonna interact and we're gonna see each other. And sometimes they're gonna be hard questions. And that's the price of you being in your position. And that's the price of me being in my position. That's the way it goes.
Speaker 1:Open this to a broader spectrum just for a moment. Speaking truth, especially to power, can be dangerous. Now this is not this, you know, for you it might be asking a politician a hard question, but for every single person in our audience, if they've ever had a boss, which I think is probably 90 something percent, you see things that are wrong and you're, well, you know, am I going to put myself in danger because I reported this or because I said well that we should fix that. That can get you in trouble, right? People don't always appreciate truth.
Speaker 1:Is there any advice that you could give not only as a journalist but just to any human being listening to you? Is there a good way to do this or is turning the, you know, turning your head the other way sometimes the right thing to do?
Speaker 2:I'm not a fan of turning my head the other way. And I understand that maybe some people don't wanna take the heat or frankly don't wanna be bothered, you know, because you kinda know, you know, I've said many editorial meeting where other journalists are passing on stories. And, if I think there is legitimate news in it, I will pursue it. If I don't think there's legitimate news in it, you know, then I won't. And I understand that what some people think is very important to them may not be important to the broader whole.
Speaker 2:And sometimes in news, I understand people get frustrated with news gathering because, you know, you're covering a wide spectrum of a population, so there's only so much you can cover every single day. You know, you you get more experience and better at what you're doing. I think I have pretty good news judgment and people get their news judgment with more experience. But number one, you have to be straight up with people. Like, you know, at one time I was this contractor had taken tens of millions of dollars from everyday homeowners like you and I.
Speaker 2:You know? And finally, the homeowners couldn't get any help from legal avenues, and so they reached out to the media. And, you know, I reached out to this contractor that was defrauding everyone. And, I said, here's the deal. You know, we're gonna talk.
Speaker 2:I wanna talk with you. I wanna give you a So I met with this contractor face to face, Ari, and asked him the hard questions, you know, but I was straight up. I'm like, you know, I'm not gonna go easy on you or anybody else, because people you've been taking money. I think if you're just very straight up and honest with people and if they don't wanna meet with you or share information with you, that also is their prerogative. But then know, okay.
Speaker 2:I gave you a chance to have your say. You know, you don't get to condemn and criticize afterwards. If you turn down the opportunity to explain your case, you can privately if you want, but you know, that's why we will reach out to everyone. Let's hear from you and approach it from I'm a straight shooter. There's no dog in this fight.
Speaker 2:You know, you maybe this new report is out that someone doesn't agree with. Okay. Why don't you agree with it? I think if you're straight up, not that it isn't tricky, it's tricky. And you know, many doors have been slammed in my face and, and phones slammed down and, you know, my emails deleted by people because do do some not want to speak with the media?
Speaker 2:You bet. Not everybody loves the media, but then also if you reach out to the media because you want something covered, you know, then you got to step up.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. It's a tricky job you have there's a lot of complexity to it that I think not everybody appreciates. I want to take you kind of back in time. You mentioned that you were born and grew up in LA, but your first job as a journalist and I want to take you to tell me the story of the first day, the first maybe hour of how you were feeling, what happened, what brought you to Joplin, Missouri.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And just make us feel like we're right there with you.
Speaker 2:Okay. You know, that's a great question too because that's kind of how I start the book. Like you're right there with me. So Joplin, Missouri, I was so stoked. My very first job, you know, it's a little bitty market as far as TV news is concerned, but I was so stoked.
Speaker 2:And my I think it was 2223. My stepdad and I went to go find an apartment together and kind of a funny story. I was we lived in Oklahoma City at the time, and I just graduated college. So we're driving to Missouri about four hours away, and we pulled into town. I was hoping to get into town by 10:00 news so I could watch the news because I was just such a news junkie and eager.
Speaker 2:And so we found this hotel and, I remember my dad and I were checking in and and the hotel clerk was like, do you want this room for an hour or you want it for the night? And we were like, well,
Speaker 1:that's my dad, dude.
Speaker 2:That's my dad. Right? And my poor sweet little father, five foot four, you know? Yeah. Horrified.
Speaker 2:Let me just say that we were both horrified. And my dad was like, do you wanna work here? And I'm like, gotta start somewhere. You know? Let's do it.
Speaker 2:And, so the next day then, I did go into the TV station for the first time. And when you drive to the TV station, it's in the middle of a farm field between Missouri and Kansas in Pittsburgh, Kansas. So you are in a farm field. So that was, you know, eye opening. It wasn't the swanky TV station people might envision.
Speaker 2:And the first day on the job, my news director, and, she was like, okay. Let's get you acquainted, fill out the paperwork. Right? You're kinda walking around, meeting all the who are gonna be your coworkers. And she's like, and then here's your locker with all of your equipment.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, equipment? And she says, yes. The camera. And it was back in the day when there was a camera and a huge recording deck and those big ass tripods. And then all of them combined way more than I did.
Speaker 2:And she's like, so this is your equipment. You're gonna go out and you'll shoot your own stories and you will edit your own stories. You'll produce your own newscast. You'll write all your own stuff. Duh, duh, duh.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, well, and all of that for, I think my first year I made 14,500. And I was like, I didn't know I was going to be a one man band, but you know, all right, this is my lot in life. Here we go. And so, you know, when you first start to pitch stories and you're going back in the day of newspapers and making some phone calls, I'm new to town. And once you set up the interviews and, you know, you're gonna go shoot videos.
Speaker 2:So you head out the door in a vehicle by yourself to places you've never been to before on your own with equipment you've never worked with before. You get a quick training as everything in news is trial by fire usually. And then you start to learn how to shoot appropriate interviews or when we would have to shoot stand ups or even our own live shots. We did all of that by ourselves. So we use a light stand or what we would now use as a cell phone, tripod, but use a light stand to set up where you were gonna stand, you know, zoom in, focus, pull out.
Speaker 2:You go run-in front of that then and do your live shot. Cause there's no crew when you're in these markets, you're doing it on your own. And you know, you're logging all your own video. You are writing your own stories. You're editing that, and everybody edits now on their phones.
Speaker 2:But back in the day when we were editing on the machines, you know, that was videotape. People remember videotape.
Speaker 1:Let let's let's let's talk about this for a second because with AI editing is just it's a whole new world today. Yes. What did editing feel like back in the day?
Speaker 2:Oh my god. It felt like a dinosaur because you had big editing machines and you had tape. So you put, you know, tape in one machine, a tape in another machine and you're, you're toggling and setting your in and out points of your video. It's so time consuming. Even now editing is time consuming with the advent of technology.
Speaker 2:So take the technology out of it. It's really more, you know, doing something by hand and piecing it together. You know, in, in video, there are frames of video, thirty seconds or 30 frames of video every second, you know, so you got to toggle up with little pointer, but it was, it was tricky. Editing was tricky. I what's great about those jobs too, is so your, your own assignment editor, your own researcher, your own photographer, your own editor, you produce your own pieces in your own newscast.
Speaker 2:If you're anchoring and you're your own editor and, you know, you always have someone else reading your script, usually the bosses. Because of course the second set of eyes always makes the story better. So you're doing all of that, which gives me great appreciation for each individual role now. I mean, I totally get why editors have full time jobs. Do you know how much time that takes?
Speaker 2:You know, and photographers get you understand and really learn to appreciate everybody's job around you. The people in the control room, the directors, the producers, you really learn in an appreciation for all those jobs because you do them all. And then as you start to climb through the markets, some of those responsibilities get delegated out so that we, the reporter, can better focus on actually gathering the news information to put that story together. Yeah. It was an adventure.
Speaker 2:It was the hardest I've ever worked in my life, And you make your best friends and you also become very adept at what you're doing quickly because you have to.
Speaker 1:I'm hearing from you though that you have a deep appreciation for that phase because it kind of allowed you to, to understand and appreciate everybody else's job and kind of have that, that good connection with them.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. Because, know, being in a newsroom, it's like playing on a sports team. Nobody gets to the goal line on their own. In news, you do not get your stuff on TV by yourself. It literally takes a village or a team.
Speaker 2:And so I have massive appreciation for every role in the news gathering process.
Speaker 1:We are going to fast forward a little bit now. K. You just got the phone call that you have been nominated for an Emmy. What does that feel like? The
Speaker 2:first Emmy? Like, know, you know that feeling when you fall in love for the first time? That's what it feels like. You know? Because you're just this little cub reporter kind of starting out, working your way up to the top, and this is one of those hallmark moments that you always wanna get better and be be the best that you can be.
Speaker 2:And the beautiful thing also about TV news is, you know, you can watch CNN or Fox News or whatever. You can watch other journalists that you respect and learn from them as well. That's a beautiful thing about news is you can watch others to become better and you get that call of, hey, you know, first you're nominated for an Emmy. And you're like, I am? Like, you know, oh, this is this is good.
Speaker 2:Okay. I'm on the right track. Maybe, you know, maybe I am doing what I'm supposed to be doing in life. And then you find out you win, you win an Emmy. And this is important from peers in the industry.
Speaker 2:So your colleagues, they're looking at you going, Hey, this girl knows a thing or two. What a great report. And that is, that's a good badge of honor, you know, and it motivates you or it did me to want to become better. I want to win more of those Emmys. I want to win more awards and it wasn't just for approval.
Speaker 1:And you did.
Speaker 2:And I did. Thank goodness. You know, hallelujah. Yes. But it's a good motivator.
Speaker 2:Know, if somebody throwing you a bone and you're like, well, that bone tasted good. Let's get some more of that.
Speaker 1:So this is an incredibly hard question. Some people hate answering it, but I'll, I'll, I'll, we'll give it a try anyway. If you're looking back over a long successful career, what's your favorite story? What's the one that stayed with you? And sometimes they're sad, sometimes they're happy.
Speaker 1:No judgment.
Speaker 2:Okay. No, fair. I am thrilled to answer this question. The one that has stayed with me the most. There are two, but I'm going to just keep it to one.
Speaker 2:So Jamie Kloss, it was 2019. Barron County, Wisconsin. Was working for KSTP television, the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis. Her parents in the middle of the night, a stranger burst his way into their home in this little rural county, 2,000 people, literally, everybody knows everybody. Stranger burst into the house, shot and killed her father at point blank range.
Speaker 2:Jamie's mother had grabbed her, and Jamie was a teenager, 13, 14 years old, grabbed her and was bear hugging her to try and protect her from this random shooter. Well, the random shooter shoots and kills the mother. So she falls to the ground. Of course, Jamie's, you know, horrified and scared. And then the shooter grabs her, duct tapes her hands and her legs together, pulls her through the house, through her mother's blood, through her father's blood, then stabs her in his trunk and takes off and she's went missing for eighty eight days.
Speaker 2:And, when this happened, it was right around, I believe it was October ish, November ish of twenty nineteen. Barron County is two hours from Minneapolis, which is where I was based and lived. And so all the media is, from the Twin Cities because that's part of our coverage area. It was going to Barron County. And, you know, at first, we're like, kinda what's the story here?
Speaker 2:Like, who would wanna break into the home? What's the dynamic with the family? Dada dah. And you dig into all that. And I think we're all just really blown away of how all American this family was.
Speaker 2:They really liked each other. They liked sports. They hung out together all the time. They went to church like nobody had a drug or alcohol addiction or owed money to anybody that we could find. And Jamie was just a teenager.
Speaker 2:And what I'm so proud of about that is so I kind of made a choice with my bosses too. I'm like, you know, I I'd like to stay and it's hard to go back and forth two hours every day because you lose four hours of your day. So I'm like, set me up in a hotel. You know, let me get to know this family because if Jamie comes out of this alive, we're gonna wanna talk to the family and hear that survivor story. And so the family and I became fairly close right or wrong.
Speaker 2:But I was in their business every day and the sheriff at the time, he's so so good. Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald, he would hold media press conferences, you know, every day or every couple days, keep us in the loop. So I'm living at this hotel, and, we're trying to investigate who would have, you know, come and just randomly kidnap this teenager and, murder her parents. So fast forward to 01/10/2020, escaped from her kidnapper, and I broke that story. I had I I stayed there.
Speaker 2:I developed contacts. You know, I spread a wide net and day in and day out, I let people in that community know I was there, and I was there to try and help find her and uncover the truth of what all this was. And I got a tip that Jamie here's the tip. Jamie has been found. That was the only tip I got, and then I'm not gonna explain how it came and all of that.
Speaker 2:I I protect my contacts and sources. But Think about that phrase. She's been found. Is she alive? Here's the hard question.
Speaker 2:Is she in pieces? Does our family know? You know? What do you mean she's been found? So we we didn't know how injured or if she was alive, what that meant.
Speaker 2:And so I'm racing up to where I know she was found and to break that story. What happened was Jamie did escape her kidnapper, and she she was up in the being held out a cabin far Northern Wisconsin along Lake Superior. And she ran out of the house in her kidnappers clothes because she didn't have any clothes of her own because he didn't give her any. So, you know, it's in winter. You're gonna freeze to death if you step outside at all.
Speaker 2:It's negative 20 all the time. And, she ran into a woman who happened to be out walking her dog, who happened to be a trauma social worker of all things, you know, who just, and she said to her, can you help me? This man kidnapped me and he murdered my parents. So the woman knew right then she was Jamie Klaas because there was a nationwide Amber Alert going on. And so the woman grabbed Jamie, took her to another neighbor's house that she knew had guns in the house in case the kidnapper tried to come back.
Speaker 2:And they called deputies, and then it started this whole cascade effect of deputies, you know, taking Jamie to the hospital, getting her checked out, da da da. And a phrase I like to say is, Jamie saved herself. And that sticking in there, staying with that story, living out of a hotel for four months, and being able to break that story. And what was so special about it was when I learned that Jamie had been found, you know, I made some phone calls to the sheriff. He didn't know at the time.
Speaker 2:I could tell. I knew his tone of voice. I'd interviewed him a 100 times. So I knew Jamie had been found, but I he didn't know. You know, I checked with him.
Speaker 2:I checked with some other people. I checked with Jamie's family when I got the tip, and they were like, no. Because earlier in the day, there was a false report that Jamie had been found. And in Southern Wisconsin, turns out to be completely false report. So all the family, everybody is like, you know, no.
Speaker 2:That's a false report. False report. And I'm like, no. I knew who I know where I got my information. This is not a false report.
Speaker 2:And it also was incumbent on my station owners and managers. I had to tell them, trust me. You you know me. I've worked for you for almost ten years now. You know?
Speaker 2:Trust me. This one is not a false report. Let's go with it. Let's get all of our resources up north. And I called Jamie's family after a number of false reports.
Speaker 2:And imagine her family get false report, you know, reporters calling you constantly after this. And I'd called Jamie's family, you know, and and the family, and we got along very well, but they were pretty taxed out with the media that day. And and I said, listen. Jamie has been found. Jamie is alive.
Speaker 2:You are gonna get a phone call that she's being taken to this hospital. And I said, what I ask of you, though, is please don't make any phone calls as soon as we hang up because I didn't want anyone to be able to track their phones. And frankly, I wanted to break this story, but I didn't wanna break this story on TV, and that's how Jamie's family found out. That'd be horrendous. That's not even humane.
Speaker 2:You know? So I said, I'm calling you because I know she's been found, and I'm about to rush the TV station. I'm gonna get on the air. I'm gonna break this. But she's been found, and congratulations.
Speaker 2:She's, you know, physically, in one piece. And her aunts were just like, are you sure? And I said, I'm absolutely sure. I'm gonna hang up the phone now. I said, I would expect in the next ten or fifteen minutes, you're gonna hear from the sheriff.
Speaker 2:And she's like, how do you know this before the sheriff? And I said, I'm not gonna answer that. But I've been around long enough. I know what I'm doing. You know?
Speaker 2:And, while I was still on the phone with her, I heard her doorbell ring. And I said, there you go. There's the sheriff. I'm gonna get off the phone. I gotta run to the TV station now and get on TV.
Speaker 2:But I did not want them to find out like that. I wanted them to find out for me personally. Then the sheriff showed up, backed it up. And so I'm very proud of that because I was able to, give that family what they wanted, which was Jamie back. And, you know, and then the sheriff can take care of the rest from there.
Speaker 1:Wow. I mean, that's that I'm I have goosebumps. That is, it's just an incredible story. You get faced with the worst of humanity more often than most of us. What does this what does this do to you?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, there are a couple of other things that during the George Floyd riots, I was shot in the hip. And I got Lyme disease on the job, being bitten by a tick, going through some searches. And then I was also my life was threatened at gunpoint to that my head by a protester during another demonstration. You know, at some point, you do start to absorb the trauma that you see and that you cover. And that's kind of why I stepped away from news a few years ago, because after doing all of this for thirty years and the last few experiences I had was being shot in the hip, having a gun pointed at my head, because I was the media, you know, he said your media, your necks.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, oh, wait, wait, wait. You know, I, I didn't work all this hard, this long and build my career to not be able to enjoy some sort of retirement at some point. So you do absorb the drama, the trauma that you see and you cover and that you yourself experience. I've had chemicals thrown on me when I knock on someone's door. You know, I've had people intentionally try to hit us with their vehicles or trip us up with equipment.
Speaker 2:So you do absorb that. For me, there was a period that drinking was a way that I, know, dealt with it to kind of numb myself. And fortunately, I got into recovery and a treatment program. But it became a point too that you have to realize it was the light switch for me. I would try to compartmentalize.
Speaker 2:And at the end of the day, you know, flip that switch so I wouldn't take it home to my family or friends and make them in endure and see what I did. But I chose that profession. And I love to tell the survivor stories. And yeah.
Speaker 1:The the the young woman standing in that news station in Missouri, would you caution her in any way?
Speaker 2:Yes. And I would caution her in this respect. Just be aware that the career that you're going into now, it has changed. There used to be a day, you know, back in, when I worked in Philadelphia, the media was the celebrity, you know, and that was even when Allen Iverson was playing for the sixers, You know? And everybody was like, oh, what a great sports town, all that.
Speaker 2:And it was. It was a great sports town, and they were stars. But it was interesting because the media personalities were the stars, which was interesting. Those days are over. And so I would caution the young me of, you know, this isn't really celebrity anymore.
Speaker 2:The job that you do comes with some hazards and be aware of that. Know that going in, and be aware of your safety. You know, if you can, if you have a photographer crew. And once you get in larger markets, you do. You know, move with your crew.
Speaker 2:You go as a group. So I would then just be aware that everybody has an agenda and what somebody says does not make it the truth. It's your job to vet that and get to the bottom of the facts. I know that people will try to use you and manipulate you. Be aware of that.
Speaker 2:It comes with the terrain, not just journalism. It comes with almost anything anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Beth, what an absolute pleasure. Believe it or not, our time is up. We're actually over. This has been I'm so much sorry.
Speaker 1:No. It's always my fault and it's only always because we're having so much fun. There's only one scripted question on this show, but it's difficult one. Alright. If you had to go you had to go back to the hardest points in your life, whether it was six months ago, three minutes ago, or twenty years ago, what would you advise yourself?
Speaker 2:I would advise myself to give myself. I think everybody does the best that they can, whether you're a journalist or a doctor or a teacher or a podcaster or a nurse. I think everybody does the best they can. And sometimes they do what they can in life. Cause we none of us know what the other person's going through that day or having a bad day.
Speaker 2:And and we all have bad days and sometimes we're off our game. Sometimes we aren't our best selves and we make mistakes. That's human. Humans make mistakes. So I would tell myself to forgive myself for the things that I could have done better and to learn, learn from the mistakes.
Speaker 2:The mistakes are not a character fault. Learn from those mistakes, forgive myself and wake up the next day just knowing, okay, if I didn't do the previous day as good as I thought I could, or I could do it better, learn from that.
Speaker 1:Beth, one last question. Tell us the name of your book and where we can find it.
Speaker 2:Thank you. So you might be able to see, you know, the poster behind me. It's called Standby, which we know is a TV term for, we all have earpieces in our ear and kind of that moment when you're in limbo of the control room of producer telling you, stand by, get ready for whatever's next, because you don't know what's gonna happen next. So that's the title of the book, standby, And, you can get it anywhere books are sold. Barnes and Noble, It just came out on Kindle yesterday, and, I'm working on Audible now.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna do my own, voicing of the book.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Because I kind of reached out to readers. I threw a net out. Do you want me to, do you want to hear from me or are you way over me and you'd like to hear from someone else? And people have said, since it's your story, why don't you record it? I'm like, okay.
Speaker 2:So that'll take a few months to come out. And then I have a website and the other website. So www.bethmcdeemedia.
Speaker 1:Beth, thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Ari, thank you, and great questions. I enjoyed talking journalism with you.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you. Thank you. I'm gonna take that as high prey.