Molinari's co-host Mitchell shows strong Missouri roots Former KMBC reporter remembers leaner times in Kansas City

LOS ANGELES - Russ Mitchell, who was named as Susan Molinari's
co-anchor Thursday on the new CBS "Saturday Morning" news program
that signs on in September, is Missouri through and through.
Mitchell grew up in St. Louis, attended journalism school in
Columbia and came to Kansas City upon graduating in 1982 as
reporter-trainee at KMBC, Channel 9.
He later spent seven years on St. Louis airwaves before landing
an overnight-news job at CBS in 1992. Currently Mitchell is anchor of
the Sunday night newscast on the network.
Mitchell flew out for the announcement here at a gathering of TV
critics; afterward I asked him what he remembers of that time.
Mostly he remembers it the way many journalists recall their
freshman year, as an act of survival more than anything.
The atmosphere around KMBC at that time contributed to that mood.
Channel 9 is a news powerhouse today, but when Mitchell arrived
for his internship in mid-1982, it was down in the ratings.
Those creamy-white News 9 vans you see zipping through town?
Not in '82, recalled Mitchell.
"We were the 28th largest market at the time, but we could've
been 128th," he said.
"We didn't have a news truck, didn't have a live (broadcast)
truck."
Does Mitchell remember his quintessential rookie moment? Sure he
does.
"One day I was sent out to do four stories - four 'packages. '
One was a medieval festival.
"One was an Alan Wheat fund-raiser, and I forget what the others
were. The last piece I did was the Alan Wheat fund-raiser, in the
evening. By the time I got there my brain was fried. He was running
for Congress, but in my story I called him a senatorial candidate.
"I felt like an idiot, because the people at home didn't know
that was my fourth story of the day."
Mitchell was honored by the National Association of Black
Journalists in 1995 for a story on Martin Luther King's daughter, the
Rev. Bernice King., that appeared on the CBS newsmagazine "Eye to
Eye."