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Born in Florida and raised in Independence, Kansas Mr. Kurtis graduated from The University of Kansas with a B.S. in Journalism. He attended Washburn University School of Law where he was awarded a Juris Doctor.
Mr. Kurtis began his television career at WIBW-TV (CBS) in Topeka, Kansas. In 1966, after being recognized for his 24-hour coverage of a devastating tornado, Mr. Kurtis was hired by WBBM-TV in Chicago where he was a field reporter and later anchor of The Channel Two News. Mr. Kurtis moved on to the network level at CBS where he anchored the CBS Morning New and contributed to CBS Reports. During his career as a network newsman, Mr. Kurtis covered such notable stories as the Richard Speck murders and the Charles Manson trial. He is also credited with breaking the Agent Orange story, and the story of Amerasian Children in Vietnam.
Returning to Chicago and WBBM-TV as news anchor in 1985, Mr. Kurtis began his career as a documentarian, traveling to the far ends of the ea the Award-winning series The New Explorers, which aired on PBS. In 1990, he founded Kurtis Productions and began producing programs for the A&E Television Network including the long-running, award-winning Investigative Reports, American Justice, and Cold Case Files. Cold Case Files was nominated for a 2004 Emmy for Outstanding Nonfiction Series. Mr. Kurtis is also Executive Producer of a new ten-part series, Investigating History airing on The History Channel. This exciting series challenges accepted historical fact and uncovers the true story, utilizing forensic scientists and historians, beginning October 18th, 2004. Mr. Kurtis also provides satirical narration for the feature film comedy Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, starring Will Ferrell.
The Death Penalty On Trial: Crisis In American Justice (PublicAffairs) is Bill Kurtis' latest book on issues surrounding capital punishment in America, available Nov. 9, 2004.
In his home state of Kansas, Mr. Kurtis is a rancher, radio station owner, art gallery owner, small businessman, supporter of small town America and an active conservationist. His 10,000-acre Red Buffalo Ranch is a working cattle ranch, raising and marketing organic grass-fed beef. The ranch is located in the last section of North America to enjoy untouched tall grass prairie, a personal point of pride for Mr. Kurtis. The ranch is also the site of environmental artist Stan Herd's latest earthwork, Prairiehenge, a hall-acre native stone homage to the prairie and the Osage Nation, which once laid claim to the land. The Red Buffalo borders the small town of Sedan, Kansas, where Bill has worked closely with residents to renovate and restore an historic and charming downtown, now full of art galleries and antique shops, restaurants and Bill's own Red Buffalo Gift Shop. Nearby, in his hometown of Independence, Bill and local investors own KIND Radio, the station that gave Bill his first broadcasting job.
Mr. Kurtis is the recipient of numerous humanitarian, journalism, and broadcasting awards including Emmys, CableACE Awards, and the Thurgood Marshall Award for his Investigative Reports installment on the death penalty. He is a published author and a member of the board of directors of several distinguished organizations including The Nature Conservancy, The National Park Foundation, and The Field Museum of Chicago.
Bill Kurtis has been earning the respect of viewers, colleagues and competitors in television journalism for more than thirty years. His career has touched every facet of the most influential medium in our lives.
Television was just finding its place within America's consciousness after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy when Bill Kurtis faced an important choice between two career paths: television or the more traditional role of a Kansas lawyer.
"Although I had accepted a job with a trial firm in Wichita, I was still reporting for a local station when a tornado literally ripped a new highway through the state capital. I was on the air at the time and saw firsthand what television can do. In this case, it saved lives with its instant warning and my career decision was made."
Television held the promise of the future and Kurtis headed directly for Chicago, not knowing the next four years would be one of the most wrenching periods in the country's history. The last half of the sixties was a time of protest, riots, cities on fire, and for a young reporter seeing it from the streets of Chicago, it was an incredible "education."
By 1973, Kurtis teamed up with Walter Jacobson at WBBM-TV (CBS) and over the next nine years, they made Chicago television history. As a news team, they established a formidable record for covering news, and in the process Kurtis initiated several innovative practices which have become standards for the business today.
He became the first local "foreign correspondent," taking reporting skills to world hot spots when international stories contained an element of special interest to the Chicago area. It began in 1975 when he went to Vietnam two weeks before the fall of Saigon. Further trips followed breaking news stories: the sectarian war in Northern Ireland; the breakup of Rhodesia; and environmental tragedies like the plight of the black rhino in Kenya and Tanzania.
The second innovation was an investigative reporting unit which examined critical issues at length. The "Focus" unit discovered Vietnam veterans who felt that they had been injured by a defoliant used by U.S. forces in Vietnam -- Agent Orange. A series of documentaries outlined what became one of the most important veterans' issues of the decade.
By 1982, CBS Network News beckoned, asking Kurtis to anchor the CBS Morning News from New York, where for three and-a-half years he also completed a series of hourlong documentaries for the prestigious CBS Reports, exploring subjects as diverse as organ transplants and airline safety. In 1985, Bill Kurtis returned to Chicago with a new dream, to expand the traditional long-form journalism reports into new areas. Since then, he has created a singular presence on cable television as one of America's most prolific documentarians and presenters. Now seen exclusively on the A&E Network, Bill Kurtis anchors the week-nightly, primetime series Investigative Reports, the longest-running regularly scheduled series devoting a full-hour to a single contemporary news topic.
On the Emmy and CableACE Award-winning series Mr. Kurtis has presented some of the most talked-about news-based documentaries on television, including the five-part "The Men Who Killed Kennedy," "Sins of the Fathers", the two-hour "Newt Gingrich and the Republican Revolution," the four-part special "Naked News," and "The Secret Tapes of Richard Speck," a controversial expose of lax conditions in the Illinois prison system which resulted in statewide prison reform. Other critically lauded editions include "Hillary Rodham Clinton: First Lady on the Front Line," "Inside Scientology," the Oscar-nominated documentary "The Farm," "War on the Presidency: The Road to Impeachment," "The Nazis Secret Killing Squads," and the five-part series, "Guns in America." The Emmy Award was presented to two editions in 1996. The CableACE Award has been presented to (among others): "Halcion Nightmare," "Thalidomide: The Drug that Came Back," "Plague Monkeys," and "Seized by the Law."
Bill Kurtis is also executive producer and anchor of two other hourlong series seen on the A&E Network: the weekly, primetime series American Justice, (co-produced with Towers Productions, Inc.) is an acclaimed historical documentary series about some of the most fascinating crimes of this century. On American Justice, Bill Kurtis has interviewed some of America's best-known attorneys, including Williams Kunstler, Alan Dershowitz and F. Lee Bailey. Critically acclaimed programs have included the two-part "The Manson Family Murders," "Mob Fathers," "Why O.J. Simpson Won," "Obsession: Amy Fisher," "Von Bulow: A Wealth of Evidence," "Preppie Murder," "John Wayne Gacy: Buried Secrets," "Death Row Women," "Menendez Murders," and "High Crimes and Misdemeanors." American Justice has received a Gideon Award, presented by California Public Defenders in 1996.
Mr. Kurtis is also executive producer of The New Explorers. The Peabody Award-winning science-adventure series highlights the exciting role of modern scientists, "new explorers" of today, as they pursue the never-ending adventure of discovery. The hourlong series began on PBS in 1991 and is still seen in over 100 countries worldwide.
Beyond these television broadcasts, Mr. Kurtis also shares a unique partnership between corporations, schools, museums, and partner science institutions to create a new approach to teaching science in the classroom. The National Science Explorers Program is one of the top science teaching initiatives in the country, built from this revolutionary partnership and the New Explorers series. In use as part of the curriculum of the Chicago Public School System since 1991, it has been adopted by several other communities across the nation. Electronic Field Trips, beamed via satellite to places as far away as the South Pole, have linked millions of America's students with scientists and their stories. All this on computer-friendly field trips, via PCs and phone lines with students never having to leave their desks. A new project, taking science education into the 21st Century, is "eld!n," the Electronic Long Distance Learning Network. It is currently a pilot program in the Illinois Middle Schools and has gained much acclaim and attention from educators and the scientific teaching community for its curriculum-based, interactive educational programs, making the best use of electronic technologies such as CD-ROM and the Internet.
The New Explorers successful approach to presenting science on television has been appropriately awarded: The George Foster Peabody Award, broadcasting's most prestigious award; the National Education Association (NEA) Award for the Advancement of Learning through Broadcasting; the Westinghouse-American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Television; the San Francisco State Journalism Award; and the Parents Choice Award, among scores of others.
Over the decades, Bill Kurtis has been the recipient of scores of awards for excellence in journalism. Recent awards include: the 1998 Illinois Broadcasters Hall of Fame Award, 1997 William Allen White Foundation Citation from the University of Kansas; election to Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, Washington (1997); 1995 Excellence in Journalism Award from the International Press Center, Chicago; Peter Lisagor Award for Public Service from the Society of Professional Journalists; CAMPI, the Make-A-Wish Foundation's Male Media Personality of the Decade (1990), Overseas Press Club Award for International Reporting Demonstrating Concern for Humanity, the Broadcast Advertising Club of Chicago's 1995 Person of the Year, the 1995 UNICEF World of Children Award, and the 1995 NATAS-Chicago/Midwest Chapter Silver Circle Award for 25 years of merit in television journalism. Bill Kurtis has received over 20 Emmy Awards from the Chicago Chapter of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
A native of Independence, Kansas, Kurtis graduated from the University of Kansas with a B.S. in Journalism in 1962. In 1966, he received a Juris Doctor from Washburn University School of Law and passed the Kansas Bar that year. A member of the American Bar Association, Mr. Kurtis also holds several Honorary Doctorates of Humane Letters. He serves on the Board of Directors of the National Park Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, and the Kansas State Historical Society, as well as numerous other national and Chicago area private and civic institutions, with an emphasis on those involving natural history and the environment.
Mr. Kurtis first book, Bill Kurtis On Assignment, is published by Rand McNally. He recently narrated the CD component of the best-selling We Interrupt This Broadcast (Sourcebooks, Inc.), by Joe Garner, a pictorial book/CD package highlighting the most famous -- and infamous -- moments of the 20th Century. He also produced the introductory video for the Yellowstone National Park Visitors Center, Yellowstone Revealed, narrated by Walter Cronkite
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