Fluff-Mongers Had Better Be Wary of KCSN’s New Boss

In the old days, he ordered his reporters and technicians into the field like a general sending troops into battle.

Television station news director Irwin Safchik would have responded to an event like last week’s space shuttle tragedy by mobilizing a staff of 140 and $1 million worth of sophisticated television gear.

These are new days for Safchik, however.

He had only one reporter available Tuesday when Challenger exploded. And all Safchik could do was recommend that the reporter take an inexpensive portable tape recorder to Taft High School in Woodland Hills to get reactions.

The hard-driving editor who once headed Los Angeles’ largest broadcast news operation for KNBC-TV now runs the city’s smallest--at low-powered KCSN-FM (88.5) at California State University, Northridge.

$972 Yearly News Budget

Instead of the $1-million-a-year operating budget that he had at Channel 4, Safchik has a yearly news budget of $972 at KCSN.

And instead of coordinating news coverage for a staff of experienced reporters and hard-boiled cameramen, Safchik is working with greenhorn college students who have volunteered to work at the campus station for journalism-class credit.

“I fully expected to have to get on the phone and hope that students answered,” Safchik said of his instinct to assemble reporters and quickly begin broadcasting the shuttle story Tuesday morning. “I assumed nobody would be at the station.”

But several students who had signed up to work when this semester’s news programs begin airing later this month were already gathered around the Teletype to read bulletins on the shuttle disaster when Safchik reached the campus from his Tarzana home.

At his suggestion, they divided the work of writing a newscast script and collecting local reactions. Then the students interrupted KCSN’s regular country-music programming with a series of special news reports.

“I can’t fire them. I don’t even give them grades,” Safchik said of his young reporters. “But there’s not as much of a problem as you’d think. They are here because they want to be. And they have pride in what they do.”

Huntley-Brinkley News Editor

Safchik, 59, was news editor of NBC’s trend-setting “Huntley-Brinkley Report” in the 1960s. After that, he was executive news producer for Channel 4 for six years. He was promoted to news director in 1977.

At KNBC, Safchik was known as a hard-edged newsman who liked his stories the same way. He opposed the lightweight, fluffy features that were creeping into local newscasts at the time. And that attitude led to his firing in late 1980.

After his ouster from Channel 4, Safchik worked as a news producer for Channel 2 and then as a segment producer for NBC news magazine shows.

After that, he taught broadcast classes at USC and Cal State Northridge with an eye toward retirement. He was asked by Northridge officials to apply for the job at KCSN, where he runs the news operation and critiques students’ work for journalism professors who give grades.

“First and foremost he was a journalist, which is rare in this day,” KNBC reporter John Marshall said. “The story was all that counted for him. He didn’t care about the so-called flash and trash, which has become fashionable as of late on some of the other channels.”

Channel 2 anchorman Jess Marlow worked for Safchik in the 1970s. He remembers him as a “very tough, very demanding” boss: “Sometimes he seemed to be unforgiving, with a very low tolerance for people who didn’t care. Having said that, Irwin probably has the best news judgment and highest standards of anybody you’ll ever work for.”

Golden Mike Awards

University officials in Northridge say that’s what they were looking for last month when they began seeking a new radio news director. The previous one, Jayne Bower, quit to work for a commercial Los Angeles station after helping KCSN win a shelf full of Golden Mike awards from the Radio and Television News Assn. of Southern California.

Michael C. Emery, acting chairman of Cal State Northridge’s journalism department, said Safchik’s recruitment was a “coup” for the tiny 3,000-watt station, which broadcasts to flat areas of the San Fernando Valley from a short tower on top of a campus building.

“He’s an older person working with kids 18 to 21 and you wonder how he will put up with their jokes and antics. But he’s unflappable. He’s been through a lot of big stories,” Emery said.

Under Safchik’s direction, students will air seven short newscasts and a half-hour news show each day. Announcers, writers, engineers and reporters will be volunteers from journalism classes who work at the station when they want to.

“You can’t tell people to come in and work at this time or that,” Safchik acknowledged. “They have to study. They have jobs. They have different levels of ability. When they make mistakes, I’ll get to them and tell them what they did wrong and what they should do the next time. Hopefully, they will.”

It won’t be like the old days, when Safchik said he would “land hard” on professional journalists who fouled up.

The news Safchik will be covering at KCSN won’t be like that of the old days, either.

Local News Emphasized

His students will report on campus events, Valley news and Cal State Northridge baseball games. For the NBC network and for KNBC, Safchik directed crews covering 14 national political conventions, the Hillside Strangler case, President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and civil rights protests.

Students say Safchik is approaching his new work with gusto, nonetheless.

“The enthusiasm he has is like a cold: It’s going through the whole family,” said senior Alan Yudman, 22, of Thousand Oaks.

“We’re all new at this and this is our first experience in radio. He’s already suggesting story angles, like going to a high school for reactions to the space shuttle. We hadn’t thought of that.”

Marlow said Safchik is like that.

“It’s a pity not to have him here. I’d love to draw on his brain every day,” Marlow said.