By Amanda Estes

Staff Writer

Former WCSH-TV Channel 6 reporter and weekend news anchor Jennifer
Rooks has worked weekends for the last 18 1/2 years. In her new post,
host of the weekly public affairs series “Maine Watch,” Rooks has free
time at the week’s end.

Now, if she can only let herself relax.

The Cape Elizabeth resident joined the Maine Public Broadcasting
Network (MPBN) on June 4 after 13 years at Channel 6 in Portland and
WLBZ-TV Channel 2 in Bangor.

“With every show I learn something,” Rooks says during an interview at
the MPBN radio building in Portland. She splits her time between the
radio station and MPBN’s television studio in Lewiston.

As host of a weekly series, Rooks’ schedule has changed a bit – she’s
not racing out to cover traffic stories – but there’s still plenty of
room for the unexpected. The Nov. 30 show was ready to air, but then a
hearing examiner’s report to the Maine Public Utilities Commission was
released, recommending against the proposed sale of Verizon
Communications’ landline telephone business to Fairpoint Communications
Inc. So Rooks and her producers scrambled to put together a new show
about the debate.

“For the past couple of years there wasn’t a regular host for the
show,” Rooks says. “MPBN really wanted someone who would really focus.”


Previous “Maine Watch” hosts include former Maine Gov. Angus King, MPBN
radio news producer Barbara Cariddi and former Channel 6 co-worker Don
Carrigan.

Rooks says “Maine Watch” gives her the opportunity to tackle in-depth
reporting every week, a style of journalism she has always favored. In
1998, Rooks traveled to Hungary and Bosnia to cover deployed Maine
National Guard and Reserve soldiers. Her reports earned her a Edward R.
Murrow award.

Last summer, Rooks interviewed people connected to World War II, ordinary people put in extraordinary circumstances, she says.

“[They’re] the kind of people if you could meet one of them in your
life, you’d be lucky,” she says. “It sounds corny, but I could do that
all my life – interviewing fascinating people.”

Rooks’ documentary, “Citizen King,” about the former governor earned her a second Edward R. Murrow award in 2003.

When she first started working as a reporter in Maine, Rooks says she
was afraid no one would talk to her. Having grown up in suburban
Atlanta, she says she worried there might be some truth to the stoic
New Englander archetype.

“There’s no such thing as this Yankee reticence,” she says. “It’s a myth.”

No doubt it helped to receive a warm welcome from her new colleagues at Channel 6.

“Susan Kimball said, ‘Oh, you must be Jennifer’ and gave me a hug,” she recalls.

Rooks earned her B.A. from the University of Virginia and her master’s
in journalism from the University of California at Berkeley. While in
college she landed an internship at CNN, which was then headquartered
in the basement of the Turner Broadcasting System’s (TBS) building in
Atlanta and nothing like the large-scale, world-wide operation it is
today, she says.

Her first “real” job was at KPIX-TV in San Francisco, where she worked
as a news messenger for $6 an hour. The job largely entailed driving to
the airport to pick up footage and interview subjects.

“Here I have this college degree and internship at CNN and I’m doing this humiliating job,” Rooks recalls thinking to herself.

The job, however, gave Rooks a chance to see how the newsroom operates.
She quickly realized the reporters and photographers were the ones who
got to go out into the field. Rooks went on to become a weekend
assignment editor, reporter and producer in San Francisco and Monterey.


While in California, Rooks says she had an experience that showed her
how important the news can be during a time of uncertainty. In 1989,
the Loma Prieta earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale rocked
San Francisco, killing several people and causing major infrastructure
damage.

“You’d walk down the street and see people with portable TVs and you’d
realize they were getting the news from your station,” she says.

Rook says she went through a similar experience while covering Maine’s
Ice Storm of 1998. While there may be a lot of cynicism in the
business, when it really matters, the news becomes a powerful tool
informing someone’s day, she says.

She met her future husband, Mike, while in graduate school. Rooks says
her husband has a large extended family in Maine, but when they decided
to move to the state, they didn’t think it would be for more than a
couple of years.

But then they got settled in and as Rooks puts it, “Maine gets in your blood.”

Rooks says her new position is not so different from that of news
reporter in that both require her to make her guests feel comfortable.
For her own part, Rooks says she has to become comfortable asking her
questions on camera rather than behind the scenes. Before it didn’t
really matter how she phrased her questions, but now Rooks is finding
she has to speak more clearly and be more articulate.

Tonight, Rooks will forgo articulate for goofy as she reprises her role
as master of ceremonies at Holiday Fest 2007 in South Portland’s Mill
Creek Park. The mother of two says the hardest part of the job is
finding fresh holiday jokes appropriate for all ages.

Rooks says daughter Julia, 6, and son Sam, 9, aren’t impressed by her
celebrity. She remembers coming home and asking if they saw a story she
was particularly excited about and finding out they didn’t even watch
the broadcast.

When it comes to seeing mom on TV, “they don’t think it’s a very big deal,” Rooks says.