Earlier this week we sat down with one of the most popular television news anchors in the city, Fox 29’s Kerri-Lee Halkett. This award-winning journalist is a native of British Columbia and a graduate of Arizona State. Not surprisingly, she began her career at radio and television stations in Arizona, moving east to WMDT in Salsbury, Maryland, and then moving to the Fox owned stations WTTG in Washington, D.C., and WFXT in Boston. Currently she co-anchors the 11 a.m. newscast and anchors solo the 5 p.m. newscast for Fox 29.

You are from Victoria, BC. Is there anything you miss about Canada?
Well there is. I am still a Canadian citizen; this is the year I am going to get my American citizenship so I will be essentially a dual citizen, since you can hold passports for both.
There are things. I grew up on an island. Victoria is the capital of British Columbia. There are small little things that make me homesick. People will say something and I am like, “Oh yeah.”

[At this point we handed Kerri-Lee a box of Smarties, which are sort of like M&M's and nothing like American Smarties]
Oh no you didn’t. Smarties, how did you know? Oh my gosh. See things like this. It would be like someone [giving you] a Tastykake and you live in Alaska. There are little idiosyncrasies that I grew up with and are a part of me. When I say the odd word the way I grew up saying it or spelling it the wrong way, like color – colour – it brings back a little bit of homesickness. But this country has been so good to me. I did my schooling here and all that kind of stuff. You know what I really miss? This might sound weird, because if you don’t come from that area you don’t really understand what I am saying. I miss the smell of pine trees after one of our many rains, because it rains an awful lot there. I don’t miss that, but I do miss the way the forest smells after the rain. That to me is British Columbia.

How do you like Philadelphia compared to other places you've lived and worked?
Everywhere I have been I looked at as a new adventure, somewhere brand new. I never lived in those places before, so it was always an adventure. I came to Philly, a place I had never been, I never considered going, I just didn’t know anything about it and the weirdest thing happened; I realized I felt like I was home.

I tell people that and they are like everybody says; that you are on your way to New York and you are just going to leave. I really feel like this is home and this is where my son was born and this is where my roots are planted. The community is a part of my blood now. I do get upset when the Eagles don’t pull it off and I do understand the Phillies starting and not being off to a roaring good start; and I do crave cheesesteaks, so I guess I am home.

Growing up in Canada, were you influenced by reporters like Knowlton Nash and Barbara Frum?
Very good, yes and growing up with a different kind of journalism. My sister is also a journalist. She has worked for all the Canadian networks and there is a bigger focus on international news and national news. Whereas I felt like coming here, and I think there is good and bad to all the different styles – in fact it is not good and bad, it is what you like more.

I really like how in the US there is a focus on what is going on in your backyard. There are so many different stations and so many different stations at the local level it really kind of gives everyone a chance to have their say. So in Canada, there were way fewer stations, but that has changed now because there are more networks and more stations. But, it was just a focus. I did enjoy knowing what was going on around the international community and how Canada played a role in the way the rest of the countries responded to different world conflicts or world affairs. You are very right when you say it is quite different. And yes absolutely I really thought those were good examples of very very good journalists and yes I wanted to be like them.

You went to Arizona State University for its journalism program. Did you want to always work in the States or did you want to go back to Canada?
I remember when I came to Arizona with two suitcases and I showed up in Tucson, I remember arriving and thinking, “This is either the best or worst thing I ever did in my life.” And I didn’t know yet because it had just begun. Again I looked at it as an adventure.

I never really had a plan. I knew I wanted to get through school and do the best I could and discover this thing called TV news, and I just kept hoping I was good enough and that I would get a job. I kind of didn’t care where it was and just the opportunities snowballed in the US. You know I just had a university education from the United States, so it sort of made sense to continue in this country. So yeah, I was open to anything, but I was really happy to stay here.

You have been both a reporter and an anchor. Do you prefer one role over the other or do you like them both?
I like them both, because I feel like you cannot be an anchor if you haven’t reported. You’re essentially reporting from the desk. What are you going to do if you haven’t been out in the field and you don’t know what it is really like to be an anchor at the desk and have someone say my story isn’t going to make this slot because of X, Y and Z. If I haven’t been out there to experience and live X, Y and Z, I am not going to have the same sensitivity or understanding or awareness that I would have had if I had not been a reporter.

There are so many times I look at the teleprompter, but I always feel as if I am reporting as I am anchoring. I am never sticking to that script, because there may be another fact that I know from either being out in the field or talking to reporters or just my past experience that I know it is appropriate to add or expand on. So I think, me personally, I would never have wanted to get to this point without having years of reporting, and I do and I loved it.

Do you miss doing Good Day?
Good Day was great. Good Day, we always joke, and it is true, it is such a dysfunctional big happy loving family. It is a style all its own. When in your career do you get to do a show like that? Not very often and I really came to work and wondered, “Okay what kind of trouble am I going to get into today?” But, I mean that in a positive way. I was just always excited to see what we are going to do today, what is going to happen. There is always someone jumping out of a cake kind of thing. So, Good Day was a lot of fun. In fact I think it really tests your journalistic skills to a high degree because you have to be able to go from the zany to the very serious in a very quick turn. To be able to do that takes a lot of practice. So Good Day does test every single skill you get in this business.

Your 5 p.m. newscast is a very different sort of show than your competition. It is not static and you have almost a conversational tone when anchoring. Was this all part of the intent of having a more dynamic and user friendly newscast?
I definitely think it was meant to be user friendly. All the research and all the legwork happened before I was part of it. I was doing the 11 a.m. and Good Day and very engrossed in the early daypart of our news operation. So I came in when my news director asked me to audition very late in the process and I was like, “Okay, so what are you guys doing? What is this about?” And they told me there was a lot of research done and a lot of different things they looked at and people they spoke to and they [had a] pretty good idea of what might be kind of interesting to the people who would be available to watch a brand new newscast for Fox.

So, I was intrigued, I thought, “Okay. Hmm…what exactly is this?” And it took a little while to figure it out for myself before I could buy into it and I knew if I didn’t buy into it I couldn’t do it. So a lot of questions, a lot of rehearsals, a lot of experimentation and I think it is still evolving, ’cause I think you have to figure out what works and what doesn’t, but I did like the concept that it was edgy and different and a chance to do something that no one, certainly in this market, had done. And I knew not everybody was going to love it, but a lot of people who thought they wouldn’t now do and they watch. I think the biggest compliment that I could ever be paid came the other day when Patti LaBelle said, “I watch you every night, girl.” I felt like, okay, so someone is responding to this 5 p.m. news.

Several local bloggers, like Daniel McQuade, seem to talk about you a lot, and your blog on the station website generates a great deal of comments, some a bit unusual. How do you feel about this and do you enjoy blogging?
Well the world of blogging is a powerful one. That is the lesson I have learned. Be careful what you write in a blog, because it will wind up cut and pasted on everybody else’s blogs. I think it is kind of fun. My mom taught me a very good lesson, never say anything, never write anything, never do anything that you don’t want everybody to know about or respond to. So I kind of blog with that rule in mind. If this was going to get everywhere, would I be comfortable with that? So when I do see it cut and pasted and that sort of thing, I always think I suspected that one.

I just didn’t realize it could be as powerful as it is and I think that excites me and scares me a little bit. So, yeah, I am intrigued by the whole blogging thing and yes we do have to blog. That is part of the mandatory rule we have here at Fox. Our management likes us to blog, but I am just shocked anyone cares what I have to say. So, I think if anything I find it intriguing.

I sort of have to ask about this. What do you think about what can be best described as the scary stalker site kerri-lee.com?
Isn’t that weird? What do I think about that? I don’t go to it for sort of fear that there is another sort of random picture from around town that has been taken and put on that. It is terribly out of date, too. Whoever is in charge of that – update that site! You know, I don’t know. Again I think it is just such a surprise I have that anyone would take the time to do that. Yeah, I think it brings out a number of predilections. Thanks, I guess.

Is there one story that you have covered that really sticks out for you in your career?
It would have to be what it is for so many people, 9-11. I was working in Boston at the time and spent a couple of weeks with the FEMA task force that came down from New England, got to know those guys in a way I have never known any other human being under circumstances that hopefully, hopefully, hopefully are never repeated. That, still this many years later I find it difficult to describe in words what that did to me as a human being in both good ways and bad ways and the kind of journalism that that required.

Writing about things in the face of enormous human strife and tragedy was probably one of the biggest challenges of my life if not the biggest. But some of the friendships I forged, we still every 9-11 check in. I know what phone calls I am going to get and they are going to be with the photog I was with and a couple of the firefighters I got to know very well. I have the utmost respect for police personnel and firefighters after what I saw them go through. So that’s the story for me.

Can you still name all the provinces and territories?
In Canada? Yes, I can and I always love when I say to Jen Fredericks, she sits next to me and she calls it “Canadaland” and “Canadia” and stuff like that. I always try to stump them – okay try to spell Saskatchewan and she is like oh no, not that one!