Anchoring Locally but Looking at Big Picture

She was just 24 when Fox-owned KTTV-TV Channel 11 hired her as a weekend news anchor. Two years later, she was promoted to main weeknight co-anchor.

Now, at 31, seven years after moving to the big city with barely three years of journalism experience in such small markets as San Angelo, Texas, and Tucson, Christine Devine, to almost borrow a title of another hit on Fox, is queen of the hill.

For the past year, her 10 p.m. newscast has consistently knocked off KTLA-TV Channel 5, previously the champ in prime-time news for about 20 years.

“When I made her a main anchor here five years ago, I thought she had potential because she was a classy person, a fundamentally decent, genuinely nice human being, and that would come across to the viewers,” said Jose Rios, KTTV’s news director. “I look back on it and think that I must have been a lot smarter than I am now because I can honestly say today that there is no one in the country that I would trade her for. Just don’t tell her that because she’ll use it in our next negotiation.”

To be sure, Devine has benefited from some fortuitous bounces. Three and a half years ago, John Beard, a popular and polished stalwart of the L.A. anchor scene, grew disgruntled with his lot at KNBC-TV Channel 4 and accepted a pay cut to join KTTV as Devine’s co-anchor. Meanwhile, the Fox network’s prime-time schedule has grown increasingly formidable--easily beating two and often all three of the major networks here in the 18- to 49-year-old demographics for which advertisers pay a premium, providing KTTV with whopping lead-in advantages over its 10 p.m. news rivals.

Sweet, humble and ever so earnest in person, Devine spreads credit for KTTV’s success throughout the newsroom. She unabashedly flings words like “family” and “pals” to describe the camaraderie among the anchor team--which includes weatherman Mark Thompson and sportscaster Rick Garcia.

“That’s what distinguishes the anchor team here, I think, and that comes through to the viewers, but that’s at the bottom of the list of what makes a successful newscast,” she said. “As for the product, we have a really solid team of reporters--David Garcia, Tony Valdez, Christina Gonzalez, Rod Bernsen--a core of reporters who really know the city. Not a lot of rookies or new people.”

She also praises the undercover team, led by Chris Blatchford, and the decision to have it focus on topics that would interest “our target audience of younger viewers.”

“The Fox [network] programming is so young, with ‘Melrose Place’ and ‘New York Undercover,’ so our goal was to attract some of those people instead of watching them flip channels to MTV or turning it off. By directing stories toward that audience--not the top news of the day or anything--but our special reports and features, I think it has made a difference. We want the younger person to watch the news and feel a part of the news. For them to say, ‘Yeah, I know that school,’ or ‘I went to that rave party,’ or some health issue that affects them so they aren’t ignored. It’s smart, business-wise, but it’s also a part of covering the entire community.”

But even as she savors her station’s triumph, Devine believes that local TV news in general could and should be doing a better job--beginning with less emphasis on crime and violence.

She acknowledges that crime is easier to cover than almost any other type of story, that there is interest in it and that it tends to travel better across the vast L.A. market than, say, a story about one particular school district.

“But I think that has got to change,” she said. “It’s important that we don’t just spew out crime and violence. If we put out too much pollution, it can be detrimental to society.”

To remedy that, whenever she has time, Devine reports on what she calls “all the positive, neat things” going on in the Southland. And on Sundays, in conjunction with the County Department of Children’s Services, she profiles a child in need of adoption--a feature pioneered at KCBS-TV Channel 2 by Patty Ecker, but taken up by Devine nearly three years ago when Ecker left the business.

While many TV news personalities devote some of their spare time to volunteer work, Beard said that his co-anchor’s drive to give back to the needy consumes her life. He praised her journalistic abilities--pointing to her anchoring of Channel 11’s recent special on the release of Geronimo Pratt that included Devine nabbing the only one-on-one interview on local TV with the former Black Panther--but what stands out most about her, he said, is her compassion.

“She has a huge heart,” Beard said. “Her biggest problem is she throws herself into the community and into people who need help so much that her time fills up. I’ve seen her lay out her schedule when she has the opportunity to take a trip with friends or just relax with her family and she is always booked. She doesn’t like to say no to people who need help. And it’s nice to sit beside someone like that every night.”

Devine explained that it was her parents--both of whom were in the Peace Corps, work as educators in her native Arizona, adopted a Mexican child and served as foster parents for five children from Vietnam--who instilled in her this mandate for helping others. Then, when she was a student at Arizona State University prepping for a career in TV news, the anchor she admired most in Phoenix was a woman who sat on the boards of 15 charities.

“My family always stressed education, and so I always thought that I could either be a teacher or something where I was always learning,” Devine said. “And that’s news. News is awesome. You get to hang out and work with the movers and shakers--mayors, presidents, police chiefs, community activists, people in need. It’s awesome. And on top of that, it affords me the profile to be able to effect change when I’m not on the job. I work very hard at being a role model for small children. For me to be paid to learn and to give back to the community is a dream come true.”

On the issue of race, however, Devine balks at carrying any particular mantle. Her father is Brazilian, her mother Anglo, and while she understands that because she looks African American or Latin or Italian, depending on who is doing the guessing, some organizations might want her to stand up for them on various issues, she prefers to remain color-blind.

“I was stunned when I came to L.A. and saw how polarized everything is over the issue of race,” Devine said. “Just in my house growing up, my sister had blond hair, my brother was Mexican, my foster brothers and sisters were Asian, there was me. We never saw colors, and to come here and see all that tension, it made me very sad. Now, I know that I don’t look white, and so I knew that I was always going to be considered some kind of minority, whatever it is, but I felt my job was to be good, period, and do my best for everyone, anyone, no matter their ethnicity.”

As for her future, Devine said she has little interest in moving on to a bigger network job, in part because it would give her less time for local activities. She says she wants either to remain at KTTV or to run for public office.

“I know it’s not the job traditionally of the impartial journalist to be involved like that,” Devine said, “but I can’t help it.”

“Christine is professional enough not to let her compassion impeach any of her work here, but there always should be some emphasis in the newsroom on doing good,” news director Rios said, when asked if such a proactive approach was appropriate from one of the centerpieces of his ostensibly objective news operation. “As much as we are supposed to be dispassionate observers, we are all also citizens who can do some good and who should do that.”