Jennifer Karchmer

About Jennifer 

I am an independent journalist who supports local journalism. Currently, I am serving the editorship of Whatcom Watch, a truly independent monthly, totally volunteer- run, that has been publishing since 1992.  As a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Seattle Chapter of the AAJA, I am a proponent of free speech and of maintaining the integrity of journalism ethics worldwide.

With 20 years working the police beat, local municipal stories, crime and business news for the city desk, I have shifted my professional focus from daily news coverage to investigative journalism and freedom of the press issues. I am the newly-named Washington State Bureau Correspondent for Reporters Without Borders, the USA affiliate of  Reporters  Sans Frontières. This Paris-based organization supports journalists worldwide providing training, funding, and advocacy to fight censorship and defend journalists who have been imprisoned, threatened or otherwise prevented from doing their jobs – reporting the truth to the public.

Getting my start

Journalism for me began in upstate NY in the tiny newsroom of country music station WRWD 107.3-FM. In the late 1980s, owner Bud Walker, a Harvard grad and apple farm owner, knew what he was doing investing in the then booming country music faze coupling that with a first-rate news team giving live reports on the top of every hour. I was the newbie on board learning from some of the best voices in the Hudson Valley.  We spliced tape with a razor blade editing reports on a reel-to-reel and as I attended press conferences, I arrived carrying my mic with the WRWD cube prominently displayed.

That was just the beginning of my radio career that led to local news coverage at the following (alphabet soup please): WGY, WGNY, WPTR and WVOS. Later, I served a stint with the Associated Press in Albany, NY doing my duty covering the overnight shift at the helm of the print and broadcast desks for the entire upstate region.

Corporate Mainstream J

I moved onto daily newspaper writing for the Gannett-owned Poughkeepsie Journal, my hometown paper.. In the Big Apple, I worked the Wall Street beat writing for CNNMoney (then CNNfn), and doing on-air reporting on a range of personal finance and retirement topics.

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A significant move had come during my junior year of college when I took a leave of absence from my alma mater, Ithaca College, and enrolled in the Washington Semester Program for Journalism at American University in the nation's capital. While taking undergraduate classes toward my major, I served an Internship at CNN preparing scripts, writing copy and editing video for the evening news. I also assisted on the Larry King LIVE show, which followed the newscast, and was then based out of Wash., DC. 

CNN: my first time around

One highlight of my internship was working alongside John Holliman, a longtime respected journalist and one of the original reporters with CNN when that network launched in 1980. In the early 1990s, he was one of the voices from Baghdad covering the Persian Gulf War. I later learned that Holliman died young in 1998 in a car crash.

I can thank Holliman and a handful of other influential journalists and editors whose encouragement and assertive nature themselves rubbed off on me leading to a few of my most cherished career moments.

Independent Journalist

In 1993, still green behind the ears, on a shoestring budget, I independently traveled from upstate NY to Washington DC to cover the then-Clinton administration’s healthcare proposal rollout. I attended First Lady Hillary Clinton’s press conference and fed sound bites from a Marantz PMD201 audio cassette recorder through a payphone in the press room to hit deadline with my live on-air report for the 6 o’clock news. That evening's signoff: “Jennifer Karchmer. WGY-News. The White House.”

In 2010, I tapped into the same perseverance and journalism skills hopping on Amtrak from Bellingham, WA to Vancouver, Canada to cover the 2010 Winter Olympics. This time with an international dateline, I connected via the Internet with fellow IC grad Scott Lozea, a video editor who works for NBCOlympics.com, to secure a press pass and filed photos and blog reports for publications and websites in the States. ə