In her job inquiry, she noted that one in 3.8 television viewers is at least 55 years of age. : Doris Winkler’s Beat Covers New Topics for an Older Audience

A year ago, Doris Winkler was 62 and depressed. Her husband was ill; their savings had been jeopardized by an investment failure; her seven grown children no longer needed her. Winkler had had a 20-year career in journalism and public relations; now she wondered whether her active life was through.

“I realized I wanted to work in the mainstream again,” recalled Winkler, a resident of Orange. “But I looked at the marks of age on my face and thought who would hire me?”

As it turned out, Channel 7 Eyewitness News hired Winkler--for a position they had never had before, for work she had never done before. And now a year later, her new job has brought her more fame, glamour, financial security and satisfaction than she ever thought she would attain.

It all started with a letter.

The letter, which Winkler had carefully researched, pointed out that one in every 3.8 television viewers is 55 years old or older. Those viewers’ concerns were not being represented on television, she wrote. And--even though she had no television experience--she proposed to produce and host a program dedicated to seniors. She photocopied and sent the letter to every television station in the Los Angeles area.

As a result, Eyewitness News executives created a “senior correspondent” position, much like those of other specialty consumer reporters. Winkler may be the only television reporter covering the “aging beat” in the United States, according to Vic Heman, executive producer of Eyewitness News.

News stations across the country are finding that specialty reporters such as Winkler raise ratings, said Heman. Seniors, however, are not a prime target of advertising on news programs. And although Winkler may increase ratings, her primary purpose is to fulfill what the station sees as a public service obligation, he said.

After receiving Winkler’s letter, Terry Crofoot, the station’s news director, asked her to write a sample script and read it on camera. An extrovert with the soft accent of her native Louisville, Winkler spoke to the camera lens as if it were a person, talking about how aging had affected her. She detailed her depression but also told what she said she had learned from a Catholic priest--that the essence of life is change. “There is always beauty to be found in the garden of life, if one only looks for it,” she said.

She feared her script would be too sentimental for the young producers. But when she finished her audition, she said the crew applauded and a young woman yelled: “I want to be 60 years old and be just like you!”

Winkler was hired as a “free-lance talent,” at first temporarily to work on seniors-oriented mini-documentaries for May when the station devotes more air time to issues of interest to older viewers. Then, she was to work a few days a week. But she pressed for more regular work and station executives agreed to teach her the nuts and bolts of production.

She quickly found out they did not want more philosophical essays, but rather news segments that she would be expected to produce. She also was responsible for selecting her own topics. She said she learned to work faster with less research than she had in newspapers and to call “tape” what she previously had assumed was “film.” Now she reels off jargon like “live intro” and “live tag” (translation: the parts of her segment taped in the studio), “B-roll” (background shots), and “bites” (portions of taped interviews chosen for use).

And she works five 6-to-11-hour days a week. Some days she travels Southern California with a camera crew. Other days, she works in the studio only, writing, working with editors and taping the live intros and tags to her two-to-three-minute segments (seen Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays on the station’s 4 o’clock news).

“I like to give resource information people can use to solve a problem,” says Winkler, who has covered such topics as Social Security problems, senior housing, employment, nutrition and services and programs aimed at older people. She leaves involved social issues to documentary producers and shuns “demeaning” topics such as senior “kitchen bands” (which play utensils as instruments). This May, she will also work on longer mini-documentaries about the problems of older Americans.

The afternoon news show reaches an estimated 399,000 people from Ventura to San Diego. Since many older people watch news at that hour, the station assumes a large percentage of its viewers are seniors, said Heman.

In recent years, the media has paid more attention to the growing over-50 population, publishing specialty magazines such as Modern Maturity and 50 Plus. Newspaper syndicates report selling more columns on aging, and more mature faces are starting to appear on television news programs.

Even so, as a mature, female television reporter covering the “aging beat,” Winkler is probably unique.

“We were surprised at how well it worked,” said Heman. Winkler receives more mail and phone calls than most other news or feature correspondents, he said.

If she misses a segment, some viewers call to ask if she’s been sick. Some have sent her gifts they say she might enjoy: knitted key chains, bands to keep her wrists warm or special face cream.

Some of her more popular segments--such as those covering little known government services or telling how to resolve family conflicts--have brought her as many as 400 letters. Winkler said she tries to space out shows on services and programs that bring in the phone calls and mail because she has to return the calls and answer the mail herself. There are almost 600 unanswered letters in a box in the back seat of her car.

After a year, Winkler finds she has become a seniors’ advocate, adept at solving their problems. Some calls “tear my heart out and make me cry,” said Winkler. “But you can’t refuse to listen to what they have to say.” One disabled, elderly woman called her to say she had not left her apartment for seven years because she didn’t have the money to put in a wheelchair ramp. Winkler, a self-described “do-gooder,” said she found a person to contribute the money and another to build the ramp.

Through her work, Winkler said she’s learned the federal Area Agency on Aging offers a vast number of programs and services for seniors. But because their titles are not standardized, they are very difficult for anyone to find in the phone book’s white pages. She said she hopes to persuade the station management to help promote an 800 phone number to connect people with the available resources.

She said she also learned that young people care more deeply for their parents than most people realize. “People stop me in stores, and people on the set ask me questions all the time about their folks.”

Because she is now frequently recognized in public, Winkler said she no longer wears floppy shoes and muumuus to the grocery store on weekends. And weekdays, she now has her hair done every morning.

“I still wake up in the morning and say there must be some mistake! This has got to be a fairy tale!” said Winkler who frequently peppers her conversation with superlatives.

“I just love walking through here!” she said, passing a sound stage. “This is what you dream about as a kid.” Newspaper and public relations work never brought her the glamour she had hoped for, she said. But at the KABC-TV studios, shared with other production companies, she’s seen and talked to stars such as Gregory Peck and Eve Arden. Even seeing news luminaries Jerry Dunphy and Christine Lund “flipped her out” a year ago. Now, she said it’s, “Hi, Jerry. Hi, Christine.”

Once before, when she was 41, Winkler had turned adversity into advantage. She was a housewife about to give birth to her seventh child when her husband had a heart attack. Within the space of four months, five of her children were coincidentally hospitalized--two were in a car accident; one had a lung fungus, another a gangrenous appendix and another a rare blood disease. Winkler recalls the period as a “nightmare time.”

A former radio broadcaster in Louisville, Winkler felt she had to go back to work. Starting with full-time night work for an Orange County newspaper, she became a copy editor for a Riverside newspaper, a Los Angeles newspaper and later the co-owner with her husband, Jack, of an Orange County public relations firm for 10 years. While she had to sell their home, her income helped put her children, all since recovered, through college.

She said her family is most impressed with her new-found celebrity. “I think it’s the neatest thing I ever heard of,” said husband Jack. “When you consider in her youth, she was a newscaster on radio, then dropped out of sight for a while, then she went into print, then out of the clear blue takes a flyer at this and the response is tremendous . . . isn’t it marvelous?

“It proves if your attitude is right and you can relate to life as it is, there’s no need to go hunt for a rocker in the corner.”

Winkler says she’s “grateful” to ABC. Not only has the job given her life its missing “spark,” she also indicated the average pay for a specialty television reporter in a major market such as Los Angeles is about $300 a day.

“I’m damn fortunate,” she said, a smile pushing those marks of age upward. “Don’t you think?”