San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Editor of weeklies led KTVU news team
As editor and publisher of both the San Leandro Times and the Castro Valley Forum, Fred Zehnder had an outsize role in putting out weekly print editions of the East Bay papers.
He also put out the garbage, pulled weeds around the offices, typed wedding announcements and calendar items, took pictures and did every job that goes into getting free publications into circulation.
“Fred just liked to do the real work of putting out a newspaper, the nuts and bolts of it,” said Jim Knowles, managing editor of the San Leandro Times. “He wasn’t like the idea that people have of a publisher sitting behind a big desk smoking cigars. He just worked.”
When Zehnder wasn’t working he was walking, and it was while out making his nightly round of his central Alameda neighborhood on the night of June 27 that Knowles was hit by a raised pickup truck in an intersection. He was pronounced dead by medics at the intersection of Lincoln Avenue and Walnut Street. The motorist, identified as Michael Williams, 30, of Hayward, was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. Zehnder was 87 and second youngest of four brothers, all still alive. They’d been planning a reunion for July 9 in Sacramento.
“We had wanted to do it sooner, but Fred delayed the whole thing because of his work with the paper,” said Isabelle Zehnder, a sisterinlaw, who confirmed his death. “Fred was vibrant and in excellent health and still working more than full time. Everybody could depend on him.”
Zehnder started his own paper, the Scotts Valley News, in his hometown of Lakeport (Lake County), using a child’s printing press set when he was age 10. He was a man of the printed word and resisted all indications that he should go fully digital. But he also had a remarkable middle career as news director and onair talent scout for KTVU in Oakland.
Starting in 1978, he had a 22year run at the TV station, where he put together the anchor team of Dennis Richmond and Barbara Simpson, whom Zehnder later replaced with Elaine Corral, Leslie Griffith and Julie Haener, all during Richmond’s 20 years as an anchor. Zehnder also hired or nurtured weather reporter Bill Martin and sports anchor Mark Ibanez, whom he’d seen on TV while on vacation in Tahoe. He hired Randy Shilts as a reporter covering gay issues before Shilts went to The Chronicle. Zehnder also helped mold the onair persona of popular feature reporters Bob MacKenzie and George Watson.
“Fred was one of the few people in broadcasting who had the courage to hire the cosmetically challenged, including me,” said Randy Shandobil, another Zehnder hire and longtime political editor, who retired 10 years ago. “He didn’t care how people looked, he cared what they brought to journalism. We were normallooking people
who you wouldn’t expect to see on TV news.”
Starting as an assignment editor, Zehnder was promoted to news director because of his news judgment and popularity with the staff. Once promoted, he showed a brilliance not only in personnel decisions but also in conceiving and launching the popular standing features “Segment Two” and “My 20th Century.”
“You did what he told you because you loved him and didn’t want to let him down,” Shandobil said.
Frederick Eugene Zehnder was born March 5, 1934, in Lakeport, where he grew up on a dairy farm run by his father, Joe Zehnder, and where the milking was done by Fred and his three brothers. The family emigrated from Switzerland in the 1880s and homesteaded 160 acres. At Lakeport Union Elementary, he fell under the spell of a teacher who had been a news reporter, and she encouraged him.
He started the Scotts Valley News at the kitchen table and ran off 50 copies of his onepage weekly, which he reported, wrote, edited, printed and delivered on his bike, an 8mile round trip. He sold subscriptions and took in news items — dead cows and brokendown milk trucks — on the family phone line. He also picked up items by listening in on the 18 neighbors who shared a party line.
By the time he hit Clearlake Union High School, he was working as a copy boy for the Lake County Bee.
After graduating in 1952, he attended Humboldt State College, where he majored in journalism. While there, he was introduced to broadcasting through a parttime job at a Eureka radio station.
He was already 12 years into his career when he was drafted into the Army, upon his graduation from Humboldt State, at age 22. Posted to Fort Bliss, Texas, he worked at an Army public information office run by Sam Donaldson, later a famously brusque TV news reporter.
This began a string of jobs in TV broadcasting as a news director in Eureka, a cameraman at KPIX, and an assistant director on Van Amburg’s news show on KGOTV.
From there he was hired at KTVU, which at that time was an underdog independent station in Oakland, going up against the bigger stations in San Francisco — KPIX, KRON and KGO.
“I look at my success as being nurtured and guided by Fred Zehnder,” said Richmond, who cried when he got the news of Zehnder’s death at his home in Grass Valley.
“He was a calming and a guiding influence. During the Loma Prieta earthquake, we had no power and had to do our newscast in the parking lot. Fred pulled us aside and said, ‘Everyone is on edge. It is up to you to calm them down.’ We knew what our job was and we did it, primarily because of Fred.” KTVU reporter Watson spent two weeks on the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal to film a comprehensive 45th anniversary report on the storied landing by U.S. Marines in World War II. After the series of reports aired, in 1987, Watson got a simple
He wasn’t like the idea that people have of a publisher sitting behind a big desk smoking cigars. He just worked.” Jim Knowles, managing editor of the San Leandro Times
note from Zehnder ending with, “We’re lucky to have you.” Watson put it on his fridge, and it was still there 30 years later. “When someone you really admire, like Fred, says something like that, you tell yourself, ‘Well, I guess I’m doing OK,’ ” Watson said. “He always had faith in his people, and we always had faith in his judgment.”
Zehnder founded the San Leandro Times in 1991 while still working as news director at KTVU. A few years later, he bought the Castro Valley Forum. For eight years, he held two fulltime jobs, one in TV and one in print.
Zehnder lived alone in Alameda. For decades he lived in an inlaw unit behind the home of close friends Howard and Claudette Morrison, who ended up working with him at his papers. One month ago, Sandobil took Zehnder out to lunch just to thank him for hiring him and bringing him along, 40 years later. They went to Trabocco in an Alameda shopping center. Zehnder walked there from home and refused a ride back to his place, preferring to walk, as always.
“Fred still had his great laugh and was as engaged as ever in journalism and in life,” said Sandobil, now a communications consultant in Alameda.
On July 1, the San Leandro Times came out, with the usual uncredited grunt work that Zehnder always contributed. There was also a frontpage news item about his death. “It was not a splashy story,” said Knowles, the managing editor. “Fred would not have wanted that.”
He also did not want a memorial service. The brotherly reunion was still scheduled for July 9 but it was not about him. It was about his brothers John, 93, of Modesto; Bob, 91, of Sacramento; and Dave, 72, of Kelso, Wash.
All three survive him, along with sisterinlaw Isabelle Zehnder, seven nephews and one niece.