KENT – A veteran broadcast news journalist will share her experiences over her four-decade career, along with her views on the importance of local news, when she speaks to fellow Kent residents this month.
Cheryl Gould is a supporter of local news, having gotten her start there in the Buffalo, NY, area. Most of her career was with NBC News, where she was a senior producer and executive producer, working closely with anchor Tom Brokaw.
She is speaking at the Kent Memorial Library June 25 at 6:30 p.m. in a talk hosted by the Kent Good Times Dispatch (GTD).
“Local news is on the decline everywhere in the country. For me, it being in decline is a real serious issue for democracy,” Gould said in an interview Tuesday. She plans to focus her talk on the importance of local news, as well as weave in a number of anecdotes from her many decades with NBC News as a broadcast journalist. She will also speak about the technology that changed the nature of broadcast journalism.
Karen Chase, one of the founders and a member of the Board of Directors of Kent News Inc. (KNI), which publishes this online newspaper, said she was introduced to Gould by a mutual friend.
“We met for lunch and we just hit it off. She is the nicest person and so easy to talk with,” Chase said. “Cheryl has been very helpful to the GTD and she’s one of our biggest donors.”
Gould serves as a member of the paper’s advisory board. “She’s led a very interesting life. I think she’s an amazing person and her message ties into what we’re trying to do,” Chase said of why she asked Gould to speak.
Her work for NBC gave her a front-row seat to history unfolding. Gould was the first female executive producer of a nightly newscast of the three broadcast networks. She is known as a pioneer, role model and mentor for women in the industry.
“It was an awesome responsibility to determine what an informed citizen should know from that day, that week or that month,” she said. Shaping the nightly 30-minute broadcast of the evening news was about orchestrating what should be included and what had to go.
“Constantly, you had to be cognizant of time and had to cut back things on the fly,” Gould said. “I worked with the best anchor and who was never flustered.”
The veteran journalist has many interesting stories to share with Kent residents. When she retired from NBC in 2014, she was one of three vice presidents at the network. The shift to entertaining viewers was quite different from when she began.
“By the time I left, it was no longer the field I had entered. I went into journalism because I thought it was mission work—something important to do for the community,” Gould said.
Gould and her husband purchased a home in Kent 34 years ago. However, when Covid hit they decided to move here full-time.
“We got into the lifestyle, the daily routines and the pace of rural life. We love it so much,” Gould said. “Now my time is reversed and I spend the bulk of my time in Kent.”
Now retired, she devotes a big portion of her time to being a judge in journalism juried contests, particularly the Columbia University Dupont Awards and the John Chancellor Award. She has seen great examples of local news happening today.
“When I think of local news, it is to keep people informed of what is going on in their backyard that they may not be paying attention to,” she said, noting it gets people involved and educated about the issues in their community. When there isn’t news coverage, this leads to problems.
“It is how people become anesthetized to wrongdoing because they don’t know about it,” she said.
She was a board member for 27 years on the Committee to Protect Journalists and she is still connected in an advisory capacity. She resigned during the past year. Gould also is connected with many journalists that she’s mentored over the years, who still reach out for career advice or ask for guidance and feedback on their work.
“I see it as giving back,” she said.
Gould is currently doing some of her own personal writing. She’s not sure if it will become a memoir or just a collection of things for her son.
KNI Board President Andrea Schoeny is looking forward to hearing Gould share her experience in news.
“As someone who is fairly new to town, I have found the residents of Kent are really fascinating,” Schoeny said Wednesday. “To hear about a neighbor’s life is a really cool experience and how her start in local journalism impacted the rest of her career trajectory ties in with our mission of local news.”
“Having her speak is not only a good opportunity for us to highlight a neighbor, but also an opportunity to say look what local journalism does for people as far as career and as an important look at how we are providing a service to our town.”
The program is free and open to the public. Registration is requested online.
