Bob Butler is a reporter at KCBS radio in San Francisco, a multimedia investigative reporter on the Chauncey Bailey Project and owns an independent multimedia company. He describes himself as a Navy “brat” having lived in Cambridge, Long Beach, Pittsburgh, Groton, CT, San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area. He served in the US Navy in San Diego, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Newport, RI and Philadelphia. Mr. Butler attended San Francisco State University, where he earned a Bachelors of Arts in Broadcast and Electronic Communications Arts.

His first radio job was as a desk assistant at Berkeley’s KBLX in 1979, then Oakland’s KDIA in 1980. Mr. Butler interned at KCBS in 1981 and was hired as a desk assistant, later promoted to editor before becoming a reporter in 1989. As a general assignment reporter, Mr. Butler has covered news across the United States and abroad. Mr. Butler has had assignments in Namibia, Tanzania, Senegal, Mexico and Brazil. Though grounded in radio, Mr. Butler has television writing experience and serves as vice president and national EEO chair on the board of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), helping improve job security and working conditions for broadcast journalists.

Mr. Butler has won numerous awards for my reporting and editing. He was part of the KCBS news team which won a George Foster Peabody Award for coverage of the 1989 earthquake. Along with being a journalist, Mr. Butler has spent ten years advocating for more diversity in our nation’s radio and television newsrooms. Mr. Butler worked for a year-and-a-half years as director of diversity for CBS Corporation, directing an apprenticeship program that trained the next generation of television newsroom managers. Ten of the eleven apprentices were hired full-time at the end of their training, nine at CBS Television Stations. As the AFTRA national EEO chair, Mr. Butler is working to encourage the Federal Communications Commission in the United States to stop further media consolidation and make it easier for minorities to own broadcast stations. Mr. Butler is also Broadcast Vice President of The National Association of Black Journalists in the United States.

Mr. Butler was recently in Toronto for a conference but we missed doing an interview with him. But, we were able to interview him from his home in Oakland, California. During the interview, Mr. Butler talks how he started in the media, about the need for diversity in the newsroom and what can be done to have positive portrayal of Black men in the media. Enjoy!!

If you would like to contact Mr. Butler, you can email him at: bobbutler7@comcast.net

If you would like to find out more information about the National Association Of Black Journalists or the Canadian Association of Black Journalists, here is their website information:

http://www.nabj.org/ (National Association Of Black Journalists)

http://www.cabj.ca/ (Canadian Association of Black Journalists)

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God bless, peace, be well and keep the faith,
Vibe and Vegas
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