User:Byjaredbrown/Jean Enersen

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Jean Stanislaw Enersen (born June 16, 1944) is an American journalist who worked for 48 years at KING-TV in Seattle. As an anchor for 42 years, she was the first and longest-standing local female anchor in the country. She retired from full-time duties at KING in the summer of 2014, and accepted a retirement buy-out by Tegna, formerly Gannett, in April 2016. This ended her run at KING-TV, after 48 years with the station.

Early life
Enersen was born in San Mateo, California, to Irving "Stan" and Evelyn Stanislaw, while her father was serving in the U.S. Navy.

Her family moved to Magnolia when she was young and she attended Our Lady of Fatima School. She then studied at Mercer Island High School, where she participated in swimming and graduated in 1962. She attended Pomona College and transferred to Stanford University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1966.

Career
Enersen started her television career as a reporter at KPIX-TV in San Francisco and had planned to earn a Ph.D at Stanford but lost her government-funded scholarship due to the Vietnam War.

She returned to Seattle in 1968 for a job in King Broadcasting Company's documentary-film production company King Screen Productions. After a week on the job, Enersen told The Seattle Times that the subsidiary was shuttered and she transitioned into the newsroom. The film division was plagued by financial issues and pivoted its focus to educational films before it was sold off completely.

In the KING-TV newsroom, Enersen was one of two women. She told The Seattle Times, "There was a photographer who wouldn't get out of the car to shoot. I'm new. He's twice my age. He only wanted to roll down his car window and shoot from the car. So I said, 'Don't you think we could get a better picture if you came out?'"

After four years in the newsroom, Enersen became the first female local news anchor in the country in 1972, though television news consulting firm McHugh and Hoffman recommended promoting her to news anchor two years earlier. At the time, broadcast executives were unsure how women would be received by audiences as news anchors, including KING-TV owner Dorothy Bullitt, the first woman to own a television station. She appeared as KING's main anchor for the first time on August 30, 1971.

Many more women – who had previously been limited to roles as clerical workers, "weather girls," and occasionally field reporters – filled local anchor chairs after Enersen's trailblazing, including Judy Woodruff in Atlanta and Jane Pauley in Indianapolis in the early 1970s.

By 1973 Enersen was considered Seattle's top newscaster, according to market research at the time. She became known as the “The Franchise” in the local television market.

Enersen was the first local TV journalist to report from China in 1979 after the U.S. established diplomatic relations. In 1988, she was the first journalist to report from the USSR, appearing for both KING-TV and a Soviet morning show.

She also interviewed many notable figures, including Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Ken Behring, Warren Buffett, and Ronald Reagan.

Though Enersen served as a temporary host for NBC's "The Today Show" in 1986, she told The Seattle Times she decided to stay in Seattle after her daughters were born and forego a position at a national network or larger local market.

Enersen retired from the anchor chair in 2014, just before her 70th birthday. She remained on staff at KING-TV, primarily reporting for the health news series HealthLink until fully retiring in 2016.

Personal life
Enersen married Dr. Bruce Carter, president and CEO of ZymoGenetics, in 1997. Her previous marriages were to cinematographer Dick Enersen and businessman Paul Skinner, the father of her two daughters.

Philanthropy
Outside of the newsroom, Enersen was known for advocating for charitable organizations, including with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and Northwest AIDS Walk.

Pop culture
In the 2021 Netflix series "Firefly Lane," Enersen was the career inspiration for fictional journalist Tully Hart, played by Katherine Heigl. The series was set in Seattle and based on a book of the same name written by a local author.

In 2015, Enersen delivered a TED Talk titled "We're all in this together" about her career at a TEDx event held in Kirkland, Washington.