Brad Kalbfeld

Brad Kalbfeld is an award-winning reporter, editor and news executive whose career spans two energy crises, the 9/11 attacks, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and the Falkland Islands, two space shuttle disasters and five presidential elections.

He spent 31 years at The Associated Press as a foreign correspondent, writer, editor and executive. For 22 of those years, he was managing editor of AP's Broadcast division, one of the longest-serving news leaders in the cooperative's history. He is author of the AP Broadcast News Handbook, used in newsrooms and journalism courses across the country.

In 2002, he and the AP Broadcast staff were awarded the Radio-Television News Directors Association's Edward R. Murrow Award for outstanding radio spot news coverage, for their reporting on the Sept. 11 attacks. In 2006, he was editorial leader of the team that won the AP Chairman's Prize, the company's top honor, for the launch on the Online Video Network. In 2007, his staff won a Webby Award for podcasting.

As a foreign correspondent, Kalbfeld covered the travels of Pope John Paul II to such places as South Korea, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Canada and Poland in the midst of the anti-Communist Solidarity labor movement. He covered the Versailles summit, the British end of the Falklands war, the re-election of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister of Britain, the funeral of Indira Gandhi, the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco, U.S.-Soviet nuclear disarmament talks, the arrival of the U.S. Marines in Lebanon and U.S. Middle East shuttle diplomacy.

As the editorial chief of AP's Broadcast division, he led coverage of major stories such as the Sept. 11 attacks, the presidential election recount in 2000, the fall of Communism and the rise of terrorism.

One of Kalbfeld's key responsibilities at AP was innovation: he played a leading role in the launch and operations of such products as Washington Direct, a video feed service covering the federal government, the Online Video Network, GraphicsBank (the first interactive database of television graphics), and SoundBank (the online archive of AP’s millions of audio sound bites). He was responsible for AP’s broadcast wire, audio and domestic video operations.