Maya Trabulsi: Hello from KPBS.

I'm Maya Trabulsi.

Over the next half hour we're going to give you a retrospective look back at the work done by the KPBS newsroom.

It was here on the SDSU campus where your public media station, then known as KEBS, got its start in 1960.

We begin with vintage content from that era captured in a documentary called "The Sight and Sound of San Diego State" from the SDSU library digital archives.

We hope that you enjoyed this look back.

male announcer: This is San Diego State today, a study in continual growth.

From the temple of a small college, the institution has evolved into a complex of driving energy.

Expansion occurs in every direction.

Is there a canyon to the east of the college?

Fill it.

Is there a canyon to the south?

Fill it.

Is there a huge canyon to the west of campus?

Then hire a fleet of trucks day and night for over a year and fill it.

The growth of broadcasting at San Diego State perhaps best typifies both the college's growth and its attitude.

In the beginning, its facilities were housed in temporary buildings on a faraway corner of the campus, but as the school began to grow, so did broadcasting.

Going from classroom exercises to the newly acquired radio and television studios with a station operation.

This is KEBS, the educational broadcaster of San Diego State.

Because of its location, KEBS can and does serve as a training ground for broadcasting students, but its service is to the San Diego community at large.

KEBS is communication at work.

What does a person learn in broadcasting at San Diego State?

Above all, he learns to be a broadcaster.

The emphasis is in production, direction, and responsibility.

The responsibility comes in many forms.

As you see, here the radio station is student-operated.

While pursuing his coursework, the ambitious student can gain experience in almost every facet.

The conditions are real, and the concern is genuine.

There are other types of responsibility the student learns: the responsibility to the community and the programming the students do, the responsibility to themselves in fulfilling the limits of artistic integrity, as well as good business sense, and perhaps most important of all, they learn that while broadcasting is not always fun, it is always fruitful and everywhere and always crops up the phrase the public interest.

Broadcasting's own version of the Hippocratic oath.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ male announcer 2: And so it came to pass in 1967, with the help of men of vision, like Ken Jones, Malcolm Lo, and John Witherspoon, that a new television station KEBS was born at San Diego State University.

Skot Norton: Hi there, Skot here standing in front of the KPBS wall of memories.

So originally KEBS, K Educational Broadcast System, and that was the call sign for the radio station here back in the early '60s.

But then, as you'll notice, here is first general manager John Witherspoon shaking hands with President Johnson, as they signed the Public Broadcasting Act, and so we immediately changed our call sign from KEBS to KPBS.

male announcer 2: It was a very small station at first.

It didn't even go on the air until noon, and sometimes it didn't go on the air at all.

In those days it was called educational television and it lived up to its name.

But one day the station changed its name to KPBS and became public television.

Soon it was taking a look around at the world it lived in, and as the years went by, KPBS found it could do all sorts of things.

It could sing, it could talk, and talk and talk.

It could cook.

It could inform.

It could count to ten, take off its shoes.

To make a very long story short, KPBS, born just 16 years ago this month, has become a strapping healthy public television station for San Diego with over 40,000 community supporters, and we hope it will live happily forever after.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Skot: The 1970s, I was a high school kid, and my family had moved out to the boondocks, the Jamul area, and we lived right behind Mount San Miguel, that big mountain to the south, and we could not get 6, 8 or 10, the three television channels that were available.

The only thing we could really get was the UHF channels, notable among them was KPBS.

Now here we have a picture of Brad Warner and Gloria Penner.

And if you look away in the back, that looks a lot like Ken Kramer, doesn't it?

Ken Kramer: We felt like we were on a mission, you know, we felt like we had a responsibility to present a different kind of programming, to present something you would never see on commercial television, something that didn't need profit to motivate it and to justify it and to validate it.

All of that was part of what was ingrained in our hearts and souls.

This was really a different kind of television.

It was kind of Wild West.

It was very fun.

I think the viewers enjoyed it.

Everybody who put it on had a total blast, and the memories are forever.

It isn't just that there were fewer television stations, but San Diego was wired for cable pretty early, because of all the hills and all the canyons that we have in San Diego did not allow for a signal from a transmitter to get into all those shadowed areas, so cable went through pretty quickly, and you saw KPBS right there next to Channel 10 just down the road from Channel 8, as you switched.

And you switched in those days, from channel to channel to channel, so KPBS I think had more visibility than your average PBS station in other cities.

Tom Karlo: When I retired in 2020, I was updating my speeches and I asked my team, "How many distribution platforms are we on now?"

Because my last few years we really embraced going digital and getting as many digital platforms we have, and we went from two at the beginning of my career to 36, and we are on more platforms now than the 36.

♪♪♪ Skot: And then Gloria Penner.

We could do a whole show about Gloria Penner and the contributions that she made to this station.

Gloria Penner: One of the most distinguishing characteristics about San Diego, according to the people who live here, is its beauty.

Residents of this ocean side community of course appreciate its location and its climate and its topographical variety with mountains and deserts and beaches.

San Diegans are becoming aware of the man-made look as well.

The look of the buildings springing up all over the county, buildings such as this one.

As San Diego grows and few doubt that growth is upon us, more and more of the open spaces are being filled by buildings.

More and more of the old will be bulldozed away for the new.

The question of economic health, displacement of people, and management of this growth is common area for discussion.

Maya: One of the pillars of KPBS was Gloria Penner.

Starting in 1969, she did it all.

Gloria anchored, she reported, and produced the news.

She moderated debates and helped with pledge drives.

Her legacy includes the Gloria Penner Fellowship, an immersive year-long paid role for emerging journalists in the KPBS newsroom.

Here are some of our past fellows who are now part of our present and our future.

Lainie Alfaro: My name's Lainie Alfaro.

My byline you might see is Elaine Alfaro, but all my friends call me Lainie.

Elma Gonzalez: Okay, my name's Elma Gonzalez.

I've been at KPBS since 2015, so that takes at least ten years.

Marielena Castellanos: Marielena Castellanos, and I'm the South Bay--the KPBS South Bay engagement producer.

Julianna Domingo: I'm Julianna Domingo.

I'm currently the producer for "Midday Edition", which is our radio news interview show, which airs at noon every day, Monday through Thursday.

Lainie: Previously, I was a Penner Fellow.

Now I'm a researcher and archivist on the investigative team.

Elma: I'm the digital editor, but I've been in many different roles here at the station.

Marielena: I'm focused on looking for ways to connect audiences in the South Bay to the KPBS newsroom.

At the time I was taking journalism courses at San Diego City College, and I was familiar with Gloria Penner, and I applied.

Elma: It was like a dream coming true, and I didn't think I would get it, to be honest.

I was actually shocked when I got the call.

Gloria: Thanks to our listeners and to our callers.

I'm Gloria Penner.

This is "The Roundtable" on KPBS.

The Penner Fellowship was my introduction into kind of this world of public media.

Julianna: When I got the, the Penner Fellowship, I did, you know, some of my due diligence, did a bit of my research on Gloria Penner, found out kind of the very--kind of pivotal role that she's played in San Diego and especially in political coverage in San Diego.

Marielena: I always admired the way she would form her questions and how she could press people.

Gloria: If we're admitting them into this country, why don't we allow them to come into this country and and settle here and pay their taxes and their social security?

Marielena: And she was so knowledgeable about different subjects.

Gloria: He was drafted by the Padres in the early '80s and has since become a local baseball legend.

At the end of the month, Tony Gwynn is heading to Cooperstown, New York.

Marielena: I think about her a lot.

♪♪♪ Lainie: Basically, I got to meet with Terrence every week and I'd come in with my ideas ready to go, and I'd pitch him a few stories I worked on as a Penner Fellow, focused on language access to ballots and a story about voter turnout and the role the DMV plays in registering people for voting.

Elma: Every fellow has a bit of a different experience.

But mine was about working very closely with the evening edition team, editing video.

I was running down with tapes, like physical tapes at the time.

Marielena: And I really loved it because I got to practice every day my writing skills.

The producers there worked with me, including the host at the time which was Dwane Brown.

Dwane Brown: Thanks for joining us.

Have a great weekend.

Elma: I never imagined that I would still be at KPBS 10 years later working in management, working in leading a team, and leading one of the products that are so important for the station, for the news team.

This fellowship can kind of take you on that journey, the opportunity, the foot in the door.

♪♪♪ female announcer: It's time for KPBS "Midday Edition" on today's show.

Comic-Con is finally in town, so today we talked to local creatives to show just how deeply rooted the con is in San Diego.

Julianna: I did a live show from San Diego Comic-Con, which was incredible after having gone as an attendee for many, many years and being able to cover it as a producer was a really awesome experience.

♪♪♪ Elma: One of the big things for me that I always think about with with Gloria is that you know--years and years later we're still trying to honor that passion that she had.

All I wanna say about Gloria is that she's she's just someone who even after you know she's passed, she's still giving to the community, and I just wanna tell her "thank you" because in a decade or so, so many journalists have gone through this project, this program, this fellowship and come out just better, and with the right experience that they need to go out and, you know, do the service for the community that she did when she was here.

Maya: Gloria Penner is just one of many dedicated professionals who made their careers here at KPBS.

Some are still part of the team, contributing to our radio, television, and digital platforms.

We asked them about how they've watched KPBS grow over the years.

Deanna Mackey: I'm Deanna Mackey.

I'm KPBS's general manager.

I worked here in the '80s as a student assistant, and it was a very different place than it is today.

The station had five locations around the campus, around SDSU.

And their radio station was in a trailer that frankly wasn't very nice, that was scrappy, I would call it.

We were almost like a startup, and imagining what we could become and who we are today.

This year, as I'm looking back, it's extraordinary, and especially coming back three years ago as the second remodel was being finished, and as one of our staff members reflects, he calls the station "Taj Mahal of journalism."

And I agree with that.

I think it's a beautiful space, and it invites people in, especially our larger community room downstairs now, and we're doing a lot more tours where people can see the newsroom and see people at work.

And I think it gives our community a lot of pride in what they've helped make possible over these 65 years.

Beth Accomando: So I believe I go back as far as 1987.

People were in trailers back then, and the studios were very kind of--I don't wanna say tacky, but I did an interview with Sir Ian McKellen, and he was sitting in his chair and he casually leaned back and put his elbow on kind of the, a lip that was back there, and he knocked down all the sound baffling in the room.

It just collapsed and fell, and I am forever grateful to him for just casually leaning down, picking it up, pushing it back on the wall, and continuing the interview as if nothing had happened.

He was so professional and so kind and so generous.

Thomas Fudge: I first got here 27 years ago in 1998.

This newsroom that we see in the back of me right now did not exist.

And in fact, we had a very small newsroom that was kind of a corner of the first floor.

It was a little bit like working in a garage, but it was a very talented newsroom too.

Two of the people who worked back in those days with me, Carrie Kahn and Scott Horsley went on to have long careers at NPR.

Amita Sharma: I started working here in late 1999.

I started out working as KPBS's legal reporter.

Sure, we did television, but it was really a separate entity from the radio newsroom.

So every now and then we dip our toes in the TV and there was a weekly TV show that reporters went on, but I, as with the all the other reporters, produced stories for the radio platform.

And sometime around 2008, 2009, we started to put our stories on the web.

So we did a print version of our stories.

And in 2011, we started doing television versions.

And so we were, I believe, the first public broadcasting station in the country to be what's called converged.

And again, what that meant was that each of our stories went on three platforms.

We became these triple reporting threats, so TV, the web, and radio.

Tom Karlo: PBS has been a leader in delivering thoughtful and relevant news on radio and online.

And now we've added a weeknight TV program to that list.

I want to thank you for watching KPBS "Evening Edition."

I hope you like it.

Gina Diamante: I started at KPBS in July of 2011.

I was brought in to launch KPBS "Evening Edition."

When we went on the air that first day, September 26th of 2011-- Joanne Faryon: Hello, thanks for joining us for this very first broadcast of KPBS "Evening Edition."

Gina: We had two anchors, Dwane Brown and Joanne Faryon.

I was hoping that I would be able to be here for a long-term.

I was hoping to be able to be building something that lasts.

This has been a wonderful place to be, and I have been working in broadcast for longer than I care to think about.

So, out of the many places I've been, this has been the best.

Thomas: I did not think that I would be here for 27 years.

I can--I can assure you of that.

Beth: [laughing] No, I did not think I would be here this long.

I feel like some relic or dinosaur.

Anita: It has contributed so much to my development, it has emboldened me in my personal life to ask certain questions and demand answers.

It has really contributed to my growth as a human being, not just as a journalist.

Maya: KPBS is now one of the largest newsrooms in San Diego.

Here's some of our staff on the memorable stories that they have covered.

Andrew Dyer: The biggest story, well.

They're all big stories, right?

There's no--there's no little stories, but I think, for me personally, covering the LGBTQ+ community and the veterans and the military, because, you know, anytime, especially now, you have government sanctions, discrimination, I think it's a big deal.

Lara McCaffrey: It's covering the ICE raid that had happened at the Italian restaurant Buona Forchetta.

I ran, like, I actually ran down the street.

And was out of breath, and when I got there, there's already so much chaos unfolding.

Matthew Bowler: The biggest story, probably the hardest to cover, of course, was COVID or the border, probably the caravans.

Two, three thousand people walking up, camping out right along the border.

Gustavo Solis: Gustavo Solis.

I go by Gus, and I'm the border reporter here at KPBS.

Historic increase in immigration enforcement has been the biggest story.

It just constantly, it impacts our economy.

I mean this is a very human story, and we are covering that aspect of it here.

Charlotte Radulovich: Alright, I'm Charlotte Radulovich.

I'm a video journalist.

There's a story that really, that really stands out for me: a group of women that were all in a house, and the goal of this house was to help them rehabilitate them into normal lives.

The part that I really enjoyed was discovering each room in this house.

Each room had its own personality.

Each room was made to really help those women progress and and be reinserted into the society.

John Carroll: I'm John Carroll.

I'm a reporter and anchor here at KPBS.

I'm the same age as KPBS, 65.

The elevator situation at Saint Teresa de Calcutta Villa, a relatively new building that has had the kind of elevator problems you'd only expect in rather old buildings and, sticking with that and getting that done, even though it didn't technically affect that many people.

I considered that a big story.

Jake Gotta: I'm Jake Gotta.

I am the public matters social media host and reporter for our housing series, the story I did on where more permits are going in different zip codes, so the zip codes that have the most permits issued in the past several years had the lowest rent growth, and places that had fewer permits had higher rent growth by a lot.

Thomas: When I first got here, this was at the time when they were talking about building Petco Park.

It went to a vote and it was controversial, a lot of money and of course, they eventually built Petco Park and that really changed downtown San Diego.

Ashley Rusch: My name is Ashley Rusch and I'm a producer on "Midday Edition" with Jade Hindmon.

I think my absolute favorite was when I went all out for this Halloween special.

We called it "Spooky Edition."

female announcer: Have you ever visited the Whaley House?

Built in 1857, Some call it "the most haunted house in America."

Ashley: And just really took a deep dive into different ghost stories in San Diego.

I talked to a paranormal activity group leader that's really passionate about this, and it was just really fun to hear about local lore and kind of get people excited about Halloween.

Jade Hindmon: There are so many, like, you're asking me to choose my favorite child here, but I really enjoyed a segment and really it turned out to be an entire show on, you know, the ex-vangelical movement.

You know, it was the Evangelical movement was so instrumental in the last election and even in previous ones as well, and so that growing movement being as influential as it has been it was really great to sit and talk with religious leaders and faith leaders to get their insights on that.

David Jones: I'm David Jones, and I'm the "Evening Edition" producer.

It was a crazy day, the fires that happened on Montezuma Road.

We sent Jacob out there and then us in the building were actually affected by the breaking news as we were covering it.

Skot: And then came the big wildfires.

Our digital folks were able to take the Google Maps and create this overlay that showed where fires were, where evacuations were.

This is very innovative and became a model for many broadcast stations, and you see apps now that provide that very same sort of thing.

Carolyne Corelis: Hi, my name is Carolyne Corelis, and I am a video journalist here at KPBS.

The most favorite story I've worked on recently was one that I worked on myself and I produced myself as well.

It was on the Pala Rez Radio.

Pala Rez Radio has some really interesting programs that are available to the people of Pala.

And I just really enjoyed talking to the people who put it on, and they have a deep passion for the community, and I resonated with that a lot, and I was really proud of the story that I was able to share with them.

Andrew Bowen: I'm Andrew Bowen.

I'm the KPBS metro reporter.

This is a really easy question.

My favorite project that I've worked on at KPBS is my podcast "Freeway Exit."

There was once upon a time, San Diego was a very walking and public transit centered city.

And that all changed with the creation of our freeways and so there's a lot of interesting stories in that history, a lot of forgotten history, and stories and history that are still happening.

Claire Trageser: Claire Trageser, and I'm the Public Matters editor at KPBS.

I did a story about broken trash cans in San Diego and why there were so many of them.

I learned more about trash cans than anyone would ever want to know, and seeing that, although the city said that they slowly picked up the trash cans over the course of 15 seconds, they actually were doing it much faster than that and then dropping the trash cans down, and that was contributing to the broken cans.

Amita: Well, out of all the stories that I've covered in the very long time that I've been here, the one that really stands out is a piece I did back in 2019, and it was on a woman who I believe was 102 years old.

She said that she was still growing with her daughters, and her daughter said that they were still getting to know their mom.

I left in the early evening.

She and her daughters were just about to have happy hour.

And as I was leaving, she said, "Honey, I want you to go home and have a glass of vermouth and think of me."

Mikey Damron: Hi, I'm Mikey Damron.

I'm the lead video journalist here at KPBS.

We got to cover a submarine coming home, which is a small scale, but it was just as emotional.

So anything we get to highlight, you know, military and their families and what they mean to the community, especially here in a big military town, you know, I love doing that.

Maya: We hope that you've enjoyed our 65th anniversary special.

Viewers like you make this possible.

We're going to end with more from KPBS general manager Deanna Mackey on the community support that will keep our mission going for years to come.

Deanna: I have been blown away by the moving conversations that I'm having with people who are sharing that the work that my team does, the news, the information, the events like the book festival, we bring the community together and they're really acknowledging that and recognizing that.

But while I greatly, greatly appreciate the donations people have given, I can't say enough about the conversations, that it has led to deeper conversations with our audience and with our donors about what we mean to them and what we mean in this community.

And it's why we say we are an essential service because KPBS is so much more than a media organization.

All of us live in this community, we care about it, and the work we do to give back to San Diego is completely authentic because it's our community too.