Sure, retired NBC News correspondent Kerry Sanders never got to report on presidential policy from the White House lawn.
But in his 32-year stint at NBC, he stood outside in massive hurricanes, ducked for cover under fire while continuing to report live in Afghanistan, traveled to the North Pole and saved the lives of three different dolphins.
He retired earlier this year after more than three decades of reporting as a Miami-based NBC News correspondent since 1991. His work regularly appeared on “NBC Nightly News,” “The Today Show,” MSNBC and “Dateline NBC,” covering a wide range of breaking news and major world events.
A friend’s daughter did the math, Sanders said, and made a rough estimate of how long all his 32 years of stories for NBC News would run if placed back-to-back. It was close to four months.
“I have enjoyed every moment of it,” Sanders said.
Sanders talked about his wide-ranging career at a Poynter event, including a VIP reception with a talk from Kerry Sanders-mega fan and Poynter faculty Roy Peter Clark and a featured conversation moderated by Tampa Bay broadcast journalist — and Sander’s former co-worker at Tampa news station WTVT in the 1980s — Kelly Ring.
He’s originally a Florida man — a graduate of the University of South Florida. When he was in college, Sanders remembers, a news anchor came into his journalism class at USF and asked who wanted to be an on-air reporter. Three-fourths of the hands went up. “You, you and you,” the anchor said pointing at three people, “You’re the only ones good looking enough to be on TV.”
“Proved him wrong!” Sanders said.
Sanders reported from Jacksonville, Fort Myers, Tampa and Miami before working for NBC News. Everyone at WTVT knew he was going to be a big deal, Ring said, especially after he talked his way into embedding with Marines based out of MacDill Air Force Base at the beginning of Operation Desert Shield.
“You never know what is going to unfold,” Sanders said. “So you go on these opportunities.”
As a Sunshine State reporter for NBC, animal stories naturally made their way into his repertoire, with Sanders hugging alligators and reporting on pythons.
But another legendary Florida monster ended up on his beat: the 2000 presidential election recount, and weeks of talking to elections supervisors and explaining hanging chads.
His on-the-ground updates during over 100 named storms, including Hurricanes Andrew, Ivan and Katrina, were rain-battered dispatches showing viewers at home just how dangerous the storms were.
One piece of Sanders’ hard-won storm reporting wisdom: Lauderdale-by-the-Sea is the best spot on Florida’s Atlantic coast to get a live shot on the beach. The parking lots go right up to the sand and the camera crew doesn’t have to drag the equipment as far. He had so many Lauderdale-by-the-Sea datelines, he said, some viewers just assumed he lived there.
He’s grateful for the range, the storms and the politics and the beasts provided by being a Florida journalist.
“In television in general, to be pigeonholed is often the goal,” Sanders said. “The advantage I had was I was in Miami, and I was always going to be a general assignment reporter.”
The NBC work that took him out of Florida was just as wide-ranging, from a trip up to Antarctica to show the impact of climate change when it was still called global warming, to conflicts in Haiti, Belgrade, Kosovo, Albania, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Honduras, Venezuela and more.
In all, he’s reported from every U.S. state and 65 countries. It’s been over three decades of a job spent on the road 200 days out of the year, an exciting but arduous journey across war zones and shark dives.
After decades in journalism, Sanders said what bothers him most about the state of media is the hijacking of trusted information, from partisan cable news to social media misinformation, in the guise of reporting.
“It’s very hard to distinguish what is news, especially when people call it news when it isn’t,” he said.
He said he’s hopeful for a new generation of digital native storytellers to combat that by sticking to the principles of journalism on new platforms as an antidote.
But for now, he’s ready to embrace retirement. His next adventure is hanging out with his wife in their backyard, and fitting in some excursions he won’t be on deadline for.
“I feel like I’m on an extended vacation,” he said. “I’m enjoying it.”
Retired NBC News correspondent Kerry Sanders listens to a question on-stage from moderator and Tampa Bay broadcast journalist Kelly Ring at an event at the Poynter Institute. (Poynter/Chris Kozlowski)
