NEWS ANCHOR ENJOYS BEING IN THICK OF THINGS

Kurre has received two regional Emmy Awards for news coverage.

Variety is spice of Gina Kurre's life.

In her career as a television news reporter, the Jackson native has seen what happens when one man rises to power and has witnessed what occurs when other men lose theirs. She has earned two regional Emmy Awards for her television reporting and producing.

Though the issues on which she reports can often be complex, what drives Kurre to do her work is very simple: through it all, the variety she finds in her job is what keeps her coming to the studio each day.

Now a news anchor at KTVI, an ABC affiliate in metropolitan St. Louis, Kurre's position is one which keeps her hopping. A recent afternoon found her in the middle of a field reporting from a murder scene, then rushing back to the studio to edit and write the 6 p.m. news broadcast.

"The good thing is that you can't describe a typical day," Kurre said of her job. "It's always different and that's a good thing."

A 1980 graduate of Jackson High School, Kurre has worked at television stations in Arkansas, Kentucky and Missouri and from this mid-south base, has traveled abroad to witness the turmoil caused by fighting in Bosnia, the despair following a coup in Haiti and the joy of a little-known southern governor in his rise to what is arguably the highest position of power on Earth.

"People always ask what I would do if I didn't have this and I don't have an answer," said Kurre, the daughter of E.P and Leona Kurre of Jackson.

Kurre's career probably got its start in her activities as a youngster.

"One of the things that I would never trade in my life is having grown up in a small town -- particular Jackson," she said. "I got so much from the town and the schools."

Growing up in the small town, Kurre had a variety of interests, most of which involved performing. One of her biggest loves was music, both vocal and instrumental. During her Jackson years she went to state competition as a member of the choir and as a saxophone player.

Another interest was in speech, an area in which she also competed in both local and state contests. Eventually she would advance to the national level in speech competition sponsored by Optimists International.

The same outgoing personality which helped her excel as a public speaker led her to take part in a number of beauty contests. Kurre was named Missouri's Junior Miss in 1980.

Because her new title required a great deal of travel, Kurre elected to stay close to home and enrolled at Southeast Missouri State University following graduation from high school. Even then, she had yet to decide what career she would pursue.

"I had no clue I would end up in something like this," she said. "I always thought I'd be into psychology from the fourth grade on but I was also interested in speech.

"I was talking to a girl from Cape on campus one day -- some one I used to see all the time during speech competitions in high school -- and I asked her what her plans were and she said she was majoring in broadcasting and I thought, 'Wow!'"

"I made the decision then to go into broadcasting and never looked back."

With the decision made, Kurre transferred to the University of Missouri-Columbia and began work toward a degree in broadcasting from Mizzou's respected School of Journalism.

Following graduation in 1984, Kurre took her degree and went to work at KFSM, a CBS affiliate in Fort Smith, Ark., where she worked for 2 1/2 years.

Being in her new position and covering all types of news events, including crimes and accidents, forced her to learn some of the things that she'd missed growing up in the small-town atmosphere of Jackson.

"Going to a big college and then getting into a profession where you have to know a little about everything, I had to get streetwise to a lot of things," she laughed.

Kurre's first assignment at KFSM was an innocent one but gave her a first look at someone who would eventually become a major focus of her reporting, as well as that of other journalists throughout the world.

"The first day on the job I had just gotten into town in Fort Smith and the only thing I knew was how to get to work," she explained.

"It was a few days before the election when Bill Clinton was elected to his fourth term as governor and I was following another reporter around to learn the ropes," continued Kurre, explaining that the she and a KFSM reporter and photojournalist traveled to a chicken processing plant where Clinton was meeting with workers and shaking hands.

"I was standing there with the reporter and this man came to us and looked me in the eye and shook my hand and said, 'Hi, how are you?'"

"Later," Kurre said, "I asked the reporter, 'Who was that man?' and the reporter said, 'That was Gov. Clinton.'"

After a stint of over two years at KFSM, during which she also served as weekend weather anchor, Kurre landed a new job at Memphis' CBS affiliate WREG where, in addition to general reporting, the young journalist continued her work anchoring weekend weather reports.

Kurre's next assignment came late in 1988, when she landed a job as a weekend news anchor at KATV in Little Rock, Ark., the nation's top ABC affiliate.

The job was an exciting one for Kurre because it offered her the opportunity to focus entirely on reporting news.

Soon, however, the nature of the job changed and she was named a weekday anchor, co-hosting KATV's evening news reports.

In addition to the usual duties of a news anchor, the Little Rock station gave Kurre the unique opportunity to do special assignments, a chance at which she quickly jumped.

The first special assignment given Kurre was to follow a group of Arkansas physicians offering medical assistance in poverty-stricken Haiti in 1991. Such special assignments were exciting to the reporter because they offered the variety that first drew her to broadcasting.

"I remember I was doing a special assignment on a Navy pilot from Little Rock and there I was sitting in an airplane at the end of the short carrier runway preparing to take off and I thought, 'How is it that I get to do this kind of thing?'" Kurre laughed. "I feel fortunate to have found something that I enjoy so much."

One of Kurre's next assignments, for which she received one of two regional Emmy Awards, was a visit to war-torn Bosnia. While there, she reported on members of a trauma team -- many of whom were from Little Rock or other parts of Arkansas -- as they administered counseling to the Bosnian people affected by the brutality of war.

"There were a lot of people there who were giving out food and medical care and, sure, the people in Bosnia were fed and clothed and housed in refugee camps but there really wasn't anyone there offering counseling for the traumatic things that the people were seeing," Kurre said.

Probably the most important assignment took place close to home when Kurre began covering the presidential campaign of then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton.

"I feel it was very fortunate to have been in Little Rock at the time Clinton was running for president," she said. "I went on all of the assignments during the campaign -- the bus tour, the inauguration, the Democratic National Convention."

During the campaign, Clinton was a "dogged campaigner," according to Kurre, who said reporters covering the candidate were often required to work 23 hours a day at certain times in order to properly report on Clinton's hectic pace.

An interesting twist to the journalist's work covering a Democratic candidate running for the presidency is the fact that Kurre is a cousin to Rush Limbaugh, probably America's most ardent and certainly best known conservative.

Kurre's mother Leona is a Limbaugh and while Kurre doesn't know the conservative commentator well (he left town when she was 7 years old) she is very proud of his success. The fact that the two were related was something that became common knowledge among her fellow reporters and during the election she was often kidded about the "predicament" created by her relationship with Limbaugh.

Following the election, the Jackson native tackled another special assignment, this one a look back at Clinton's rise to power. Kurre wrote and co-hosted the two-hour special, titled "From the Statehouse to the White House," and earned a second regional Emmy Award for the work.

Now a weekday evening anchor at KTVI in St. Louis, Kurre is finding even more variety in her work. In addition to co-hosting the evening program, she is called upon to do general news reporting and an evening "package," or a news analysis segment featured during the evening broadcasts.

Here again, it is the variety of the job that she enjoys.

"People always think, 'Well it's easy for you to like your job; you're on TV,'" the journalist said. "But the newness of that wears off and that's not the part you enjoy anyway. It's the opportunity to be in the thick of things.

"The one thing about the job that I enjoy, and this hasn't worn off in 10 years in the business, is how you have the opportunity to learn so much about so many things."

Sometimes, the diversity of her duties can cause for what she calls "wacky hours," particularly now that she has taken on evening news anchor duties.

"I'm fortunate to have a very supportive husband," she said, explaining that she and Arkansas native Terry Rogers have been married for four years.

"He's very supportive of me and doesn't mind the wacky hours and wacky assignments I do and he doesn't feel threatened by it as I imagine some would be."