The Public Eye Chat With George Osterkamp

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-public-eye-chat-with8230george-osterkamp/

48 HOURS to Explore The Chowchilla Kidnapping This Weekend

“Remembering the Chowchilla Kidnapping,” to be broadcast Saturday, March 18 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network and streaming on Paramount+.

Presentation to George’s Alma Mater: George School, a Quaker School in Philadelphia

For a boy who got a pretty good Quaker upbringing, I have spent an awful lot of time in war zones.

I never carried a gun, but in my job as a news producer I’ve covered stories in some picturesque spots that tourists usually avoid:  Beirut, Mogadishu, Bosnia, Iran and Iraq.  Other places with less violence have included all 50 states, China, Russia, Indonesia, parts of Central and South America.  Somehow I’ve never been smart enough to get assigned to Paris in springtime or Italy in the fall (though I did get to Kyoto for cherry blossom season).

George School was important in my development, but it was not an easy time.  The scholastic expectations were breathtaking compared to what I’d been used to in public school.  Social expectations were also higher.  I made it through required social occasions at Orton but awkwardly.

 I remember being told at George School that graduates would often cite these as their happiest years.  As I was struggling with everything from German to physical education to social standing, I knew, even then, this could not possibly be true.

 But I did take away good things from George School.

 I was lucky enough to discover journalism on the GS newspaper.  And I was imbued at GS with an attitude that we could improve this world.  When I think about what’s next for me, I hope to combine these two things.

At George School, Ernestine Robinson introduced me to news reporting and her love for journalism.  She also introduced me to a man at Columbia who gave me a scholarship to attend-a man who I subsequently discovered also had a mean streak and a hot temper sometimes unleashed on the boys who had scholarships and worked in his office.

 I didn’t make it through freshman year.  I lost focus, lost the scholarship and flunked out of Columbia College.  Later I took classes in Philadelphia at Temple and the University of Pennsylvania (great classes with phenomenal teachers) before returning to New York to earn a degree in Government at Columbia’s adult school for General Studies in 1968.

 Most of the time back at Columbia I worked full time for The New York Times.  I liked the double load.  Sometimes school was more rewarding.  Other times it was the job.  I was one of the first copy boys The Times hired without a college degree.  Soon after, the paper hired its first copy girl.  We joked about how the paper lowered its standards to hire us.  It was a great entry level job at a great company, and I was promoted to copy editor and then writer.

But in the crazy, turbulent year of 1968 I wasn’t ready to take my degree and settle in at The Times.  I’d studied film at Columbia and wanted to go west.  I was sort of headed to Hollywood but in those days before GPS devices, I missed the mark and ended up in San Francisco.  That was fine, but I could find no job at all doing anything.

 I got a break when somebody crashed into my Volkswagen bug:  I could still drive the car and was able to live for months on the insurance settlement. Finally I decided to work for nothing to get my foot in the door at KQED, the public TV station in San Francisco.  After six months of volunteering, a production assistant job opened up.

 I worked for a series of local stations, both commercial and public, at jobs never lasting more than three years.  Then in 1982 I got a job at CBS News, associate producer in Special Events in NY.   I’m still at CBS, now as producer in the San Francisco bureau, and if I don’t screw up in the next 15 months–I may get to 30 years in this job.

I had a great run of producing interesting stories during Dan Rather’s last five years anchoring at CBS.  Dan is a wonderful reporter, a guy who loves the news.  I was intimidated at first, but grew fond of him as we worked together in difficult places, from Haiti to Moscow to Sri Lanka and South Africa.  He adds to every story he works on.

 Sadly, I’ve been less successful connecting with Katie Couric, so have had limited foreign assignments since she’s been in the anchor chair.  But I’m still pitching.

I’m sad that I never had kids.  I had a long marriage, over 25 years, to a nice woman but we ran out of gas and I’m now divorced.  My best connection to the next generation is my goddaughter, Micaela, raised in New Zealand, but now a freshman at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, NM.  So I am getting to see her more, which is great.

 I live just north of San Francisco-across the Golden Gate Bridge-in Sausalito, in a little house that has a view through some trees of San Francisco Bay and the city beyond. 

My job has given me brief, intense views into people’s lives, often when they are in stressful situations.  I’m almost always impressed by their resilience. and kindness.

 The most disappointing story I ever worked on was covering United Nations inspectors looking for weapons in Iraq.  In the months before the U.S. invasion, I was one of the producers chasing UN teams, filming the rudimentary labs they inspected. As we went from site to site, it seemed clear to me-and I thought clear in our reporting-that these poorly equipped labs were unlikely to produce weapons of mass destruction.

 So I was stunned to see “shock and awe”-the American invasion of Iraq-and could only conclude that for all the supposed power of the press, our stories and those of many others failed to slow America’s march to war.  I’ve now done four tours of duty in Iraq for CBS News, each one more dangerous and uncomfortable than the last.

The best story I’ve worked on was the first free Election Day in South Africa.

 What a day that was:  people lining up before dawn, patient, black and white together, waiting to cast their vote for Nelson Mandela… an amazing, improbable step forward in a country shaped by violence and apartheid.  Seeing Bishop Desmond Tutu dance a jig as the old man cast the very first vote of his life.  Inspiring.

 Savoring the history of the moment, I paused –and the lead story I was working on with Dan Rather almost did not get finished in time to make the air.  A reminder that News is a line of work where both “pausing” and “savoring” are done at your own risk.

I’d like to combine travel to out of the way places and reporting on things that matter.  Maybe I can connect with the American Friends Service Committee if they have interest in hiring someone to report on their far flung efforts, perhaps for a wider audience than they presently reach.

 I’m also interested in Narrow-casting (as opposed to broadcasting).  Once when my mother was recovering at a medical center I brought her some video I’d shot that morning–of her own garden at home.  I played it back through the TV over the hospital bed-and she was more delighted and involved with that video than anyone has ever been with any Emmy Award winning show I’ve done.

 When you make something interesting for millions of people, you may lose the ability to make something riveting for a few.  So if I can figure out the economics, I might like to try making television for the few– rather than television for the many.