From cigs and whiskey to Twitter, Jean Enersen looks back at 46 years in news
Jun 13, 2014, 11:46 AM | Updated: 12:50 pm
The newsroom looked quite a bit different when Jean Enersen first began working at KING 5 in Seattle.
Most of the people on the staff were men, they smoked, and her boss kept a bottle of whiskey in his bottom drawer.
“He brought me into his office and he closed the curtains, and he said, ‘Your voice would be a lot better if you’d smoke these and drank this (whiskey). He said, ‘Now’s your chance if you want to.'”
Enersen said no thank you to the smokes and the whiskey, but she still got a chance to take her female voice on the air.
She’s recognized as the first female local TV news anchor in the country and says there were a number of firsts they came across, having a female at the anchor desk.
“There’s the stage of the anchor lady is pregnant, and will people really want to see this big stomach on the air and all that,” she says.
But the experiment of a female at the anchor desk definitely worked. Enersen spent 42 years in the position winning numerous Emmy Awards and accolades for her work.
She’ll be filling the role one last time this Friday, as she prepares to say goodbye to the seat. But she’s not saying goodbye to the news. She will continue working with KING 5 on her HealthLink reports and in other capacities.
“It’s a tremendous job and that is why I want to pursue it. I want to be able to write. I want to be able to think about the things that people are interested in, particularly health care, particularly in this day and age, and to be able to cover health in this community,” Enersen says.
Even after 46 years in the KING 5 newsroom, coworkers say she’s still as enthusiastic as she was on her first day. That’s because she loves what she does, she explains.
“The surprises and the amazing things just keep happening. That is part of the enjoyment for me, getting paid to ask questions that you think you want to know the answers to and a lot of other people want to know the answers to, too,” says Enersen. “That is pretty thrilling.”
For those looking to follow in her footsteps, she says today there’s lots of ways in. While back when she started you had to get in front of a TV camera at a TV station, she says nowadays there are tons of platforms to report on.
“Now really everybody, whether they’re on their desktop or their mobile devices, has a platform for their opinions. Everybody can broadcast and everybody can write. I think that is one of the biggest changes I see,” says Enersen.
It’s a career she says you have to love, but if you’re cut out for it, she says it can be tremendous.
