Identity: The Job That Wasn't the Whole Story

Matt Gilhooly (00:00)
There's a version of David's life where he takes the safe job in a small Ohio steel town and never ends up at CNN at all. He thinks about that version sometimes. But instead at 21, he said yes to the thing that seemed impossible and spent the next 20 years covering the world, building a career that became his whole identity. Then in his 60s, he said yes again, this time to something that seemed even stranger, packing up his life and moving to Alaska for a job nobody saw coming.

in a place where a moose outside the window mattered more than an interview with the president. This is a conversation about what happens when you keep saying yes to the uncomfortable thing, about loneliness that quietly teaches you patience, and about the two words from his kids that set him free.

David S Bernknopf (00:45)
And then I got a cold call from another TV organization. still to this day do not know why they called me. and they said,

Would you like to take a job running the only investigative news unit in the state of Alaska?

Matt Gilhooly (01:03)
You're listening to the LifeShift Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Gilhoolie. This show is built around one simple idea, that sometimes a single moment can change how we see everything. Each week, I talk with someone about the moment that shifted their life and how they learned to live differently after it. These are not stories about having it all figured out. They are stories about what it looks like to keep going once the story changes. Thank you for being here. Here's today's story.

Matt Gilhooly (01:34)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the LifeShift Podcast. I am here with David. Hello David.

David S Bernknopf (01:39)
Hello, good to be here.

Matt Gilhooly (01:41)
Well, thank you for wanting to be a part of the LifeShift Podcast. We've been trying to make this happen for a few weeks now, but family circumstances on my end, and you've been so generous on rescheduling a few times, actually. So thank you for that.

David S Bernknopf (01:54)
I'm looking forward to this because it helped me think about the moments that were important getting to where I am now.

Matt Gilhooly (02:03)
Yeah, you know, it has been a beautiful exercise that I've heard from a lot of my guests of like, you know, we think about our life in different parts and how we've like changed or made decisions, but sometimes challenging people to identify like the most specific moment that we we can leads to some uncovering of different things that we hadn't thought of before. So it has been a nice journey for me. Like when I started, I was like, yeah, it was when

my mom died, that everything changed when I was eight. And really it was hours later after my mom had already passed and my dad had to sit me down and tell me that my mom had died. And it was the words that came out of his mouth that changed my life and changed everything that I knew about my life. And so it has been a journey of healing, hearing all of these conversations, even though...

Nobody has the same story, but there's something about the way we feel around certain things as humans that really has brought this connection that I didn't really expect having these conversations. So I'm excited to get into your story. But maybe before we do that, you can tell us who David is in 2026. Like, how do you show up in the world? How do you identify these days?

David S Bernknopf (03:21)
phrase I use now to describe myself is that I'm in the project oriented phase of life. I do not wish to be thought of as retired. I just hit 68 years old the idea of retirement is just something that I can't stand. Although I'm not going to an office anymore. I'm not out in the field producing news anymore on a daily basis.

don't want to walk away from all those things that I've done for my whole life. I I started, I got into the journalism business in fourth grade when I convinced my fourth grade teacher that we needed a mimeographed monthly newsletter. If you remember even mimeograph, those purple things, it's an old, old technology.

Matt Gilhooly (04:05)
Of you did.

Yeah, that's before

me, but I recall.

David S Bernknopf (04:14)
It's an old, silly technology. And no lie, from that moment on until now, I have been doing some form of journalism.

Matt Gilhooly (04:24)
So you kept yourself busy, so it kind of probably makes sense why you don't want to just stop right now. Not that retirement is stopping, people find lots of things to do in retirement, so it's just the word for you, right?

David S Bernknopf (04:27)
very.

Yeah, it's the thought that I don't have something to do when I get up in the morning. I'm an early person. I always have been. I studied early when I was in college. I didn't mind catching an early flight to go do a story somewhere. I mind that a little more now. And so when I was writing a book, which is what led to this conversation most directly,

I would get up at five in the morning or six in the morning and start writing because that's when I have my thoughts most together. that act of starting something early is what I want to keep doing.

Matt Gilhooly (05:23)
Yeah. And you said your project based life now, right?

David S Bernknopf (05:27)
Right.

work, I consult on other people's documentaries now, mostly. I'm glad I don't have, yeah, I'm glad I don't have to worry about the fundraising anymore. just take a little job here.

Matt Gilhooly (05:29)
Okay. Nice.

I love that. Just keep myself busy.

Just tell them what to do.

That's great. I mean, I think a lot of people can resonate with that idea of quote unquote retirement because I think, at least for me growing up, retirement was seen as something like where it's the wind down period. It's the I'm super old and you know, like this is the end kind of when it's not, not anymore at least. I think when we're a kid, we think that people in their 50s are old, which is.

not quite the case when you get closer to it or when you've passed it. So I can see that. think a lot of people probably find new projects, whether that's hobbies, whether that's things that they can invest in to fulfill themselves. That's not necessarily quote unquote work. So I love that that you're still like dabbling in the spaces that interest you.

David S Bernknopf (06:30)
gotta be something. I I remember doing, I did a story once. I worked at, I'll just say this now, I worked at CNN, cable news network for over 20 years. And a story that stuck with me, we did a story about people in retirement years who didn't retire. And we profiled an 80 year old guy who worked at Stanford University as a groundskeeper and he hit a mandatory retirement age.

and he didn't want to stop working. And so they worked out a deal where he became a volunteer flower planter on campus. And he was thrilled. He wasn't getting paid anymore, but he could still get up every day and do the thing he loved. And it kept him going.

Matt Gilhooly (07:14)
Yeah.

Right. And it keeps a purpose out there. It keeps like, you know, we all need some kind of purpose to keep us going. So, you know, keep doing what you're doing. I'd love to dive into your story. You gave a little bit of your background in journalism since fourth grade, but maybe you can kind of paint the picture of who you were before this main pivotal moment that we're going to center things around today to give a good understanding of that backstory.

David S Bernknopf (07:39)
Yeah, so I got out of college and I went straight to this thing in Atlanta and you talk about decisions. I sent out over 100 resumes. I graduated from journalism school at Northwestern University, so prestigious place. You would think jobs might be offered and I had two job offers to real job offers.

One was a very traditional job, small market television, Steubenville, Ohio. If you've ever heard of that, it is on the Ohio River. It was a steel town in deep decline, as many steel towns were. They wanted to put me on air as a general assignment reporter, very traditional path. The other was for this thing that didn't even exist yet. It was just starting up.

And my dad, was the only big fight I ever had with my dad. He thought it was crazy to go work for this guy he called a drunk who happened to be Ted Turner, starting up this thing that no one thought could succeed, Cable News Network. And I thought, God, it sounds so interesting. It's different. It's challenge. And so I took that job, moved to Atlanta and

was there for over 20 years covering national politics. did documentaries all around the world. I ended up an executive director of news planning, which made me kind of the network's news futurist, if that was the term I coined for myself, trying to figure out what trends and issues might be worth covering in the future. Not like something, know, plane crashes, you don't need someone to tell you what stories, how to cover that.

Matt Gilhooly (09:30)
Right.

David S Bernknopf (09:31)
more thinky things if I can say it that way. And then new ownership came in and I took a buyout because I realized that it was not gonna be the same place. And I realized that they were gonna, you know, when a company comes in and wants to make cuts, they don't look to cut the low priced employees, they look to cut the high priced employees. And I was a vice president and I couldn't prove that.

Matt Gilhooly (09:39)
Mmm. After 20 years.

David S Bernknopf (09:59)
my salary led to one more dollar in ad revenue. So I made the decision. Nobody asked me. I knew they were looking for people and I knew I'd made the right decision because when I told my boss that I wanted to take the quite lucrative buyout they were offering, his answer wasn't, no, no, we don't want to lose you. was, okay. you know, that tells you you've made the right choice right there.

Matt Gilhooly (10:27)
Yeah, for sure. mean, that's a big hard choice, right? I would imagine maybe if the lucrative

David S Bernknopf (10:32)
very hard. was my

whole, at that point, was my whole adult life. It was my identity. It really was. Like when you work, people may have a hard time understanding this now because CNN has kind of fallen a little in people's minds and it's now an old fashioned technology if you think about it. You know, now it's podcasting, but for a good 20 or 30 years, it was the place to be. And so to leave that,

Matt Gilhooly (10:38)
Yeah, right.

David S Bernknopf (11:00)
without another job did take some.

Matt Gilhooly (11:05)
That's a big plus.

would imagine you like grew up there like that is like all you knew in a way like that was right out of college. Right. So you're what 20 something when you start this.

David S Bernknopf (11:14)
Yeah.

Yeah, I was 21. I got married. I had two kids. They'd been raised in that area. You know, coming home and telling your kids, guess what, kids, dad quit his job. And they also, you know, they at that point, they weren't very old, but they they understood. Certainly my my son was old enough to understand that CNN was kind of this important thing. So, you know, walking away from something that is

A, important and B, everybody in the world thinks is important. That's a hard decision to make. But I just knew it was the it was the time.

Matt Gilhooly (11:57)
Yeah. Well, like, because of the people coming in or the buyout or just it didn't feel right. Like, was it a gut feeling or was it little things that added up that were like, this is it's time for me to wrap.

David S Bernknopf (12:10)
Well, here's a infamous story that was an internal thing, but I think it's been told in books since then. The new ownership came in and they had no experience in the news business. So CNN was not something they deeply cared about the way Ted Turner cared about it. They cared more about, you know, TNT, the sports networks and the...

programming networks. But they said something in a meeting pretty early on that, again, if you listen carefully, it makes it not a hard decision. They had spent so much money that they had to show Wall Street very quickly that they had a handle on things. And they said, we are going to make our next quarter projections if we have to sell the furniture. So.

Matt Gilhooly (13:03)
Mm.

David S Bernknopf (13:06)
I didn't want to be in a job where they were going to sell my chair. And that is not literally they were being figurative at that point, but they're also telling you what's important to them. And Ted Turner had always said to his credit, Ted had a lot of quirks about him. But one thing he said and he meant, he said, you guys worry about the news. I'll worry about the money. Can you imagine any executive saying that now?

It would be there's no there's no CEO in the world that would say that anymore.

Matt Gilhooly (13:36)
Right.

Well, and it just shows that the true like, meaning of what CNN was and why it was successful. and I think I had something very similar. I worked in a for profit private college, and I was in charge of the first semester for all undergraduate students. the faculty and just numbers and stuff in our semesters were four weeks long. So this is whole other story. But there was a point in which

admissions was reaching out to me saying, Hey, we need to start students one week late. And I'm like, well, we only have four weeks. So you're not really setting them up for success. And it became quickly very clear that it was really all about the money. wasn't about the education of the students, but here I am having to support the hundred employees and the education that we're trying to provide. And it was very much a, I was the dummy that said out loud in a meeting, do we care more about the money or the education?

I knew the answer. we all knew the answer. I mean, they all walked around it. But it was was important to me to vocalize that because it in very similar case, it's like what you're talking about. I'm doing this for the education portion, but if the people above me aren't, then what are we doing? You know, like, am I just wasting my time? So I can imagine what that feels like.

David S Bernknopf (14:34)
What was the answer?

I

came to CNN on the best day and I left on the best day. And what I mean by that is I loved my time there. I wouldn't change a single moment of it. The things I did, the friends I made, the places I went, things I learned. But when it's time to go, it's time to go. And one thing about me, and I know we're gonna get to this,

I'm really good. I like pat myself on the back here, like analyzing a situation, making a decision and doing it, not agonizing over. I just don't want to agonize over decisions. And that's worked out for me.

Matt Gilhooly (15:35)
just going.

Do you think that's part of just because of the industry you were in and the news that you were producing that you kind of just you didn't have the time to agonize over certain decisions?

David S Bernknopf (15:52)
100%. You, you live in a deadline oriented world. If you fail to make your deadline, you have failed in your job for that day. And so you make your deadlines. And I looked at a lot of decisions that same way. I want to make a decision by the end of the week. I'm going to make a decision by the end of the week.

Matt Gilhooly (15:52)
Okay. So it's kind of ingrained in you, in a way.

I mean, I love that. So you went in, you told your boss, I'd like to buy out and he's like, All right, bye. And so that that's how it worked out. Basically.

David S Bernknopf (16:20)
Yes, that is how it worked out. And it gave me, because

it was a nice buyout financially, because I was a vice president, it gave me time then to set up a small production company in Atlanta. You you have more than a year of health coverage and salary, you have a lot more freedom than most people. And so I did that for a long time. And then

Matt Gilhooly (16:29)
right?

David S Bernknopf (16:47)
I got offered a job unexpectedly in Washington, DC, back in the real journalism world doing investigative journalism for a syndicated news program. So I moved there in 2015, 16, did that job for six years. And now we're going to get to the crux of the life shift I think that we want to talk about is it's another thing where I was doing investigative stories all around the country. I love them.

Matt Gilhooly (17:06)
Yeah. Yeah.

David S Bernknopf (17:15)
And then the owners of the show, the producers, one day said, you know, politics are really hot in this country. Trump had become president. Let's do more politics. I had done my politics. And politics, to me, had become such a negative thing in terms of coverage. I just didn't want to be a part of it. And so, again, without another job,

I just told my boss, that's it. I'm going to leave at the end of this year. I'll give you a time to replace me. There was no, they, they wanted me to stay and I wanted to give them an opportunity to replace me, which they did. I didn't want to leave like with a two week notice. I wasn't going to do that, but then I'm sitting at home and I'm helping other friends produce podcasts. And I was doing a music podcast with another friend. It was just fun. But as I say in my,

Matt Gilhooly (17:55)
Right.

David S Bernknopf (18:07)
My new novel, I said, you know, you're not going to make a lot of money with 50 listeners per episode. It's just not going to happen. No sponsor cares about you. And then I got a cold call from another TV organization. still to this day do not know why they called me. They said it, they just, yeah, they called and they said, would you like to take a job? So this is 2022.

Matt Gilhooly (18:12)
Right. Right.

or why you answered?

David S Bernknopf (18:38)
Would you like to take a job running the only investigative news unit in the state of Alaska?

Matt Gilhooly (18:46)
Okay,

David S Bernknopf (18:47)
My reaction

was exactly your reaction. I believe I have no proof of this, but I believe that I laughed a little bit because it's unexpected and it just seemed absurd for a lot of reasons. In terms of TV business, it's a tiny, tiny place. thought they can't even pay me enough to pay for moving me up there. And I don't know anybody. I'm living in Washington DC. You couldn't be further.

Matt Gilhooly (18:56)
Yeah, that's not an expected call.

Right? Because you were living in DC at the time?

David S Bernknopf (19:18)
within the United States from Alaska. I had no family there, no friends there. I'd only been there once before working on a freelance travel piece. I was there for like five days. I not been years before. And I said, is crazy, I'm not gonna do it. And the recruiter said, well, would you talk to the news director? Now, how is this for a bizarre coincidence?

I didn't know this and the news director didn't know this until she gets a note to call me. It is an old colleague of mine from CNN who had moved to Alaska because she fell in love with the place. And she calls me up and she says, it's a fun job and you'll have freedom that you don't have anywhere else. And we'll fly you up here to see if you can stand it up here and you can meet the staff.

So there I am with this offer.

Matt Gilhooly (20:21)
feels a little bit more real after talking to a friend.

David S Bernknopf (20:25)
more real and I, because I trusted her, I knew that I wasn't being sold a line about the job or the freedom. So then I call my kids who are adults now, I have a son and a daughter individually, and I said, what would you guys think if a month from now I took this job and I moved to Alaska? And both of them to their credit.

replied with a version of, that would be a pretty cool thing.

Matt Gilhooly (20:59)
Guess you taught them well.

David S Bernknopf (20:59)
When my kids said

that to me, had talked to other people, but the power of my kids telling me that I wasn't crazy and that it sounded interesting, that they would look up to me if I made that what I thought was a crazy decision initially, that gave me a lot of freedom.

Matt Gilhooly (21:09)
Yeah.

Yeah, so your kids really the permission slip from your kid, not that you needed that. But at the same time, maybe you did in your heart, you needed that.

David S Bernknopf (21:31)
yeah, I think I did need a permission slip because even thinking back on it now, it's such a strange job offer. I had spent my life at the network or national level from the moment I got out of college. And even when I was in college producing radio shows, it was for the Chicago market, big, big market. And now I'm going to go work in local TV, which remember I had turned down.

40 years before. I had never worked in a steel town and not in a not in a in an icy town. so that everything was going to be new. And the thing about it that would be newest to me is working with people who were want to be careful here. And I am careful in my book because it's important not

Matt Gilhooly (21:59)
Right? This isn't a steel town though.

David S Bernknopf (22:25)
people who didn't have the experience that I had in journalism, didn't have, had not yet in many cases proven their talent in a way that people I had worked with had proven their talent, hadn't traveled as much. So didn't have the institutional memory or experience that I did. So I knew there was gonna be a challenge that way, but I also thought, and this was another key part in the decision,

that I would be able to mentor younger people. I've always found time to teach. I live in Colorado now and I have been a guest lecturer, a teacher on and off when I can at the University of Colorado School of Journalism. And I've dropped in on scores of other universities and high schools trying to encourage journalism and journalistic standards and all that kind of stuff. So the idea of mentoring people was appealing to me.

And I said, yes, I said, yes, I'll do it. And they flew me up there and everything seemed interesting and cool. And I took the job and I, I moved up as soon as I could. I've learned everything I learned, you know, moving to Alaska is a hard thing. Do you want to how you get your car to Alaska? You could drive, but it would take weeks and weeks and weeks. So you hire a company and they put your car.

Matt Gilhooly (23:39)
Yeah, how do you, where do you go?

Yeah, tell me, a boat?

David S Bernknopf (23:51)
in Washington on the, know, like on a tractor trailer and they drive it to Tacoma, Washington. Then they put it on a freighter. Whenever there happens to be a freighter carrying cars to Alaska and the freighter takes it up to the port of Anchorage and it gets taken off as freight and it takes weeks. It's just, but that's part of living in Alaska. Everything takes longer, everything, everything.

Matt Gilhooly (24:15)
Yeah. Yeah, it must

have been such a shift just in daily life to go from DC to Alaska.

David S Bernknopf (24:25)
Everything, you know, okay, Anchorage has a Walmart, it has a Buffalo Wildlings, it has a Safeway, it's not another world.

Matt Gilhooly (24:29)
Right.

You're not in like a snow castle that you built.

David S Bernknopf (24:36)
No.

But however, everything is different. The culture is different. Almost 20 % of the people who live in the state of Alaska are indigenous people. They were never put on reservations in Alaska. It's a huge difference between the lower 48 in Alaska. So cultures were preserved, languages were preserved, land rights after

some struggles were preserved. So there's a functioning, vibrant native culture that doesn't exist anywhere else in the United States. Then you have the weather. You don't see a roof for five months because they're just covered with snow. Some people are driven literally crazy by the length of the dark periods in the winter.

and the length of the days, sunny days in the summer. Nobody comes to visit you except for like the three or four months in the summer when it's nice. So, you know, you are isolated and the isolation and the loneliness that was those were the two things that were most difficult for me. The positives were everywhere you look, it's a postcard, it's beautiful.

The stories we did needed to be done and we were the only ones who could do them. In Alaska, people don't yell fake news at you. They still respect the work you do by and large. So it was important work. I felt it was important. You feel a real connection with the community and the state, which I never felt when I worked at CNN. It doesn't exist at the network level. If someone emails you,

You don't take the time to respond necessarily, because you're off on a plane to Paraguay. If you're working at Alaska's news source, which is what we called it, because it was a statewide collection of TV stations, you answer people. You answer the phone. You respond to them. That's important. And that's a connection that I never had in the news business before. It was fascinating and wonderful in a lot of ways.

Matt Gilhooly (26:51)
Did you find it challenging to or challenging to find stories? it because I think of CNN, I'm sure there was lots of things that you could easily report on even if you were stretching a bit for that particular story. Was it more challenging in that way in Alaska?

David S Bernknopf (27:11)
No, it was the opposite because we were doing deep dive investigative things, not always, but usually. And so there are so many issues up there. Health care in Alaska native villages, the lack of psychiatric care almost anywhere in the state. People are surprised when I tell them that there's a huge problem with homelessness in Alaska. So when you have in the dead of winter, hundreds of people.

living outside in tents, often burning propane tanks inside their tents for heat, how a community, how a state deals with homelessness becomes a big, big story because people are literally dying. I'm not suggesting that people don't die as homeless people everywhere, but in Alaska, it's a special hell for people who are outside in 10, 20 below weather in the winter.

So there were plenty of stories to do. Education is a constant. Funding education is a constant issue. So there were more than enough stories to do. I could still be doing them.

Matt Gilhooly (28:20)
Yeah. Do you, did you feel a different sense of purpose because of that? Because it was so close to the community? Like, I feel like maybe it would feel different.

David S Bernknopf (28:29)
Yeah,

guess the connection with the community was something that I'd never felt and that was important and that does drive you to want to do important stories. I had, you know, I did a promo for me, a TV promo. Promos are only done for

like the anchor people are the biggest reporters anywhere else. Nobody does a promo about the producer, but because I was, had some history and they believed it was, there was some marketing value and saying, we've got this big national guy coming in here to do stuff. They did a promo where they shot me at my desk, you know, pretending to type on me out in the field. Okay. True story. And this is funny. I forgot about this story until just now.

I was in a national park way out on the eastern part of Alaska. And it was just vacation. I wasn't working. And I'm just walking along this river where a bunch of people are salmon fishing or they have their tents up for hiking. There's three people around a fire. And one of them says, hey, you're the guy from Alaska's news source. And I looked at him and I went.

How do you know that? goes, let me see your promos all the time. No one had ever recognized me in my life. And then he just wanted to talk in a very open, pleasant way about the news business and about personalities at the station. Everybody loves the weather people. it's so and so a nice person, that kind of thing. But that connection is very rare for a TV news producer. It's unheard of.

Matt Gilhooly (30:13)
Yeah.

Yeah, you really probably never even at a big, wig job job in CNN, it feels like you're, you could be just another number where you're you could actually be

David S Bernknopf (30:26)
Right. know,

sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. People know the talent, the on-air people. They do not know the behind the scenes people. Do not.

Matt Gilhooly (30:30)
No, you...

Right.

Yeah. And even in the company itself, it's like you're one of probably a lot of people at CNN and we're probably I'm assuming this is bad of me, but assuming in Alaska, your team is a little smaller.

David S Bernknopf (30:52)
Pardon. Yes. My team, my investigative team was a full-time videographer editor, a full-time reporter, and then a second reporter who did part-time stuff. So yeah, to call it a team is a bit of, it's almost an exaggeration, but they were dedicated and we did travel together and we did a lot of stories together. So, you know, it was a team. We were a team.

Matt Gilhooly (30:53)
than CNN?

generous.

Yeah.

I asked, I asked about the purpose thing because I would imagine that there's a lot of people in the United States that don't often think about Alaska. It doesn't cross their mind very often. And I would imagine this is just me. Go ahead. Oh, really? Okay. Well, that makes fair. They don't care.

David S Bernknopf (31:37)
Vice versa. That was a big bit of education for me. People in Alaska

could care less about the lower 48.

Matt Gilhooly (31:44)
Well, there goes that. Yeah. I mean, because I part

of me felt a little guilty that I don't think about Alaska enough. And, if I went there and then noticed, say it was the opposite, maybe they felt neglected, I would feel a different like, I got to get more news out here so that the rest of the country feels a connection to this state. But if they don't care, then there goes that.

David S Bernknopf (31:50)
Don't feel guilty.

I'll tell you a story that, you know, I have to plug my book a little bit. I wrote a fictionalized account of my two years there. That's called Two Years on Another Planet, because that was the way I felt like I was from another planet. And I thought for sure, I'm in the break room, and I took this real story and I expanded on it as with everything in the book, I fictionalized it and I made it.

bigger and hopefully funnier. I was in the break room with two camera people very early in my time there. And we were just talking about ourselves, introducing ourselves. And I sort of slipped in what I thought would be a humble brag that would get them to sort of pay attention to me as a person and respect me. And I told them that just before I had decided to take the job, one of my last jobs.

that the old place had been producing an interview with President Trump in the White House.

They looked at me. No, it wasn't like they didn't care. They just didn't say anything. And then at that very moment, another employee came into the break room and said, hey, guys, there's a moose right outside the big plate glass window in the conference room. and they all went. Everybody went, including me, to look at the moose because we love to look at mooses.

Alaska, they're everywhere and they're huge and they're magnificent and it's interesting to watch them chew on a bush right outside your window. At no point that day or ever again did those two guys ever say to me, finish that story about Donald Trump. It just didn't mean anything to them. The moose was much more interesting than Donald Trump. And it wasn't an anti-Trump thing, it was just

Matt Gilhooly (33:57)
Yeah

then yeah, or

right. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people like in your industry would say that's a big get. That's a big, right, big deal. But

David S Bernknopf (34:06)
Just don't care.

Big deal. Producing an interview

at the White House is always a big deal, but not when there's a moose outside.

Matt Gilhooly (34:17)
Not when there's a moose outside.

What did I mean this obviously you felt like another planet. What did what what did it change in you or what did you notice about you? Like, did you feel different? Did you acclimate? Like, what was your personal journey there?

David S Bernknopf (34:35)
You know, the weather didn't bother me the days than that didn't bother me so much. The winter is long and that bothered me a little. But the real thing that I had to deal with was my personal loneliness. Because Alaskans are, they like their privacy. You don't live in a place like Alaska. If you want to be with 50,000 people at a UCLA football game, you know, you live in Alaska because you

You like the isolation, you like your privacy. Not many people go there to get away from someone or something. That's kind of an ongoing joke is, you know, what are you running from? who did you kill or who, you know? And I didn't. My answer was the job sounded interesting. But I did something I'd never done before.

Matt Gilhooly (35:21)
Hopefully you didn't have that answer to that.

David S Bernknopf (35:30)
I signed up for an online dating match thing. I don't even remember which one it was. And I thought, you know, I've got to like, maybe just even if it's just one date, it'll be more interesting than another night at home. Never found a match. And I knew that I was in trouble when one of the matches that was made for me was someone who did not use a name, but her nom de guerre was.

And I'm not lying about this. And I write about this in my book, exaggerated greatly, but she wanted to be known as Arctic muffin.

And I don't, you know, it's me. just, that just didn't sound like a match for me. don't know. Another person, another person in their bio said, I just don't like reading books. So it was just, these matches were not for me and I never made a good match. and so that was the ongoing struggle for me was you're in a place where depression,

a lot of people suffer from and it can be easy. It's Alaska has the the highest rate of suicides, of spousal abuse, psychiatric issues. It's because of the isolation, because of high rates of alcoholism and lack of proper medical and psychiatric care. And so just by the nature of being there, it's a place that can make that worse.

Matt Gilhooly (36:45)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

David S Bernknopf (37:07)
So I never felt it in that regard, but I did feel a very powerful loneliness. I had to, when I was writing the book, that was the thing I had to be, I had to come around to feeling like I could write about that in an honest way. Because it was an important part of my time there. And although it's fictional, I wanted people to understand that that's a real difficult.

Matt Gilhooly (37:10)
Okay.

David S Bernknopf (37:35)
challenge for people who come there without a family structure or a friend support group.

Matt Gilhooly (37:39)
Mm hmm.

Well, even still, I mean, coming from just your industry in the locations you were in before, I would imagine that's a high contact, high interaction environment in which it's I mean, even with a small team, it's a small team, it's not quite as connected.

David S Bernknopf (37:58)
Right. And there

were always, you know, because I went to a journalism school that puts a lot of journalism graduates in the world. I had friends in Washington who I didn't work with, who I'd gone to school with. And when I worked at CNN, it was just a giant friendship group. was one of the best things about it. And then you go up there to Alaska and you've got your two people in the unit and maybe they're not going to be your best friends in the newsroom.

Matt Gilhooly (38:09)
Mm-hmm.

David S Bernknopf (38:27)
It's a fairly small newsroom. Yeah, it's a challenge.

Matt Gilhooly (38:30)
Right.

Yeah. And also like when your kids were growing up, would imagine there's just activities with them and their family, their friends, families, and all the things that come along with that. And to go to a place where you have to be prepared for something like that. And maybe.

David S Bernknopf (38:49)
yeah, I don't want say it was unexpected because I did think about it, but the depth of that isolation was unexpected. I just assumed because every other newsroom I'd ever been in, at the end of the day, every once in a while, someone will say, hey, let's go get a beer. you know, are you, what do you do? The Super Bowl is this weekend. I'm having a party. That just doesn't happen. Two years there.

Matt Gilhooly (38:52)
Yeah.

David S Bernknopf (39:17)
No one ever invited me to a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Not out of meanness, but it's just not what is done. I had one, I had an anchor person on a Monday after Thanksgiving say to me, what did you do for Thanksgiving? And I said, I didn't do anything. I think I ate a frozen lasagna. And she said, we thought about inviting you.

How do you even answer that? Well, I didn't quite make the list of people good enough to be at your table. And again, I want to say something here. She didn't say that out of meanness. She said it because it's just not the way people think up there. They have their family groups and the idea of having a big Thanksgiving is just not what most people do.

Matt Gilhooly (39:47)
Well, it's a thought that counts. That's what they always say, right?

Yeah.

Right. So did as you're as you're navigating this, you come to realize, I would imagine that maybe this is not the healthiest place for you to be. Or like, how did you decide that you're not there anymore now? So how did that come about?

David S Bernknopf (40:28)
Yeah, at the end of two years, and I had told them that I would make it two years. didn't have like a guarantee contract kind of thing, but I told them I would do it. as it got about a year and a half in, I just thought, you know, now I'm 66 years old. It didn't work out with Arctic Muffin. I might get back.

Matt Gilhooly (40:53)
Still time.

David S Bernknopf (40:57)
I might get back up there. It's just time, it's a good time to leave. It's time to get back to a place where I have a social group, where I have friends and closer to my kids and closer, just closer to things that matter to me. Why keep fighting it? But I do not regret it for a second. I got the book out of it, which I never ever thought I had a.

Matt Gilhooly (40:57)
Yeah, never know.

Mm-hmm.

David S Bernknopf (41:24)
fiction book in me. I'm a person who my whole life was about facts and data and what's happening. And all of a sudden I thought, had journaled extensively when I was up there and I thought, you know, this isn't a memoir. This is like a funny fictional, somewhat serious thing I can write. so, and that got me up in the mornings again, even when I was there. And certainly after I moved every morning, get up and write some of the book.

Matt Gilhooly (41:52)
Did you, when you moved back, did you find it hard? Was there any difficulty in assimilating back into like the lower 48 culture?

David S Bernknopf (42:01)
No, I

think it was more difficult for everyone around me who eventually tired of hearing my Alaska stories. You know, I could be... Yeah, I'll put it in a book. You can buy it. You can laugh at it. You know, I would be in a parking lot at the grocery store and I would get into my car, which still had an Alaska license plate.

Matt Gilhooly (42:11)
And then you're like, I'll put it in a book for you.

David S Bernknopf (42:26)
And people would say, are you from Alaska? So it was a conversation starter for sure. You join the health club, where are you moving from? I moved from Alaska. And everybody goes, Alaska? That's a story. You know there's a story there. But then even I get tired of telling the same stories.

Matt Gilhooly (42:47)
Yeah, I think I asked that because, you know, when you do some when we as humans do something pretty regularly, we kind of get accustomed to the isolation, if you will, or we get used, you know, like, as a teenager, still struggling with grieving the loss of my mom, it was much easier for me to stay in a depressive state than it was to get into a different state. So part of that question is like comes from the idea that maybe even though it wasn't ideal,

you got used to it. That was the life that you were living and whether or not it was difficult to now suddenly be invited to everyone's Thanksgiving. Now you got to choose or Super Bowl parties or whatever it may be.

David S Bernknopf (43:29)
That's a really good point. And I'm thinking about it as you ask it, because I do think looking back that there were, I'm sure there were months where I just convinced myself that, you know, watching TV with a dinner in my hand and going to bed at 6.30, especially in the winter, because it's already pitch black, midnight dark, that's normal. Yeah, I just do that. And it's...

It is normal in the sense that you normalize it, but it's not healthy. And that's what I think I had to come to realize is that it's good I did it, I'm glad I did it, but it's not healthy to keep doing that.

Matt Gilhooly (44:13)
Yeah. Did you bring any of this newness back with you? Like, do you feel like a different person now than before you went to Alaska?

David S Bernknopf (44:25)
I am so much more patient, so much more patient. I come from an impainting, yes, yes, yes. Another story, not in the book. When I moved into my apartment, the microwave didn't work. So I tell them, microwave doesn't work. okay, let me send someone out. Took two weeks to get someone out because it just does.

Matt Gilhooly (44:27)
Okay, because you were forced into it.

David S Bernknopf (44:49)
Yeah, your microwave doesn't work. I'll have to order you a new one from the lower 48 because no one has that model in Alaska and it took a month. Now, if here in Colorado, where you are in Florida, if you were at a landlord who took two took a week to get someone out and then told you to take a month to fix it, you'd be pretty mad. But in Alaska, you just accept it because you understand there is no other alternative.

It's not like there are 100 suppliers with warehouses. You know, because my car went through it, stuff has to get on a freighter. There is no other way. know, small things can be flown in, but anything of any size, it's got to get on a freighter and it takes a while. So it made me more patient.

Matt Gilhooly (45:42)
in a good way, I guess that gives you some the expectations that we as a lot of Americans have is this instant gratification because we live in the world of Amazon and we live in the, know, we have these easy, we can run to the store. had a tiny bit of that when I lived for a year in Glenwood Springs, which is in the Aspen Valley.

Sometimes we were stuck there because of a rock slide and there's only a certain amount of things you can do. And it was like your story of the microwave. was very much like, someone will be out to fix that. And then you're like, okay, when, and they're like, we'll let you know it's a week later. And they let us know that they'll be there today. You know, so

David S Bernknopf (46:24)
there was

no toilet paper in any Alaska, in any Anchorage store for a week because for whatever reason, the rack of toilet paper coming in on the freighter that week didn't get loaded. And so that's the sort of thing that upsets. Exactly. But again, you just go, well, what am I going to do? There's, they're still selling.

Matt Gilhooly (46:28)
gosh.

It's a shitty situation.

David S Bernknopf (46:53)
boxes of tissues, so that's the solution. Look, everybody in Alaska, people in Alaska, especially if you live outside of Anchorage, you become your own auto mechanic. You become your own plumber. You become your own electrician because you have to.

Matt Gilhooly (46:55)
Yeah, I didn't know this conversation was going there.

source. Well, they have to. Yeah. No, I think it's I think we should all be maybe not Alaska is a choice, but we should all make somewhat hasty decisions every once in a while. I don't want to say that for you, but I've done it before. And we learn things whether it's a great experience or mediocre experience, there's something about doing something new that's totally uncomfortable, that we can learn a lot about ourselves in

what we don't like and what we do like. And it seems like you don't regret it, but you wouldn't choose to live there again, right?

David S Bernknopf (47:49)
No, I would not choose to live there again. And sometimes I do wonder whether I make decisions too quickly, but generally it's worked out for me. Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly (47:51)
But you know now.

That's me.

That's all you can do. You

can't go back and fix it, so let's move on.

David S Bernknopf (48:05)
I know too many people who agonize over decisions and then they end up whatever decision you make, it's a decision you've made. why, why play it out? Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly (48:15)
And it brings you to this point.

Right. So you said that you, you did a lot of journaling and all your stories, but then realized maybe it was more of a something funny fictionalized was did. Why did you choose a fiction version of that? And curious.

David S Bernknopf (48:34)
At first, when I started journaling, and I was writing down things every day at the end of my day at work, including quotes that I could remember as closely as I could remember them, thought maybe I'd do a memoir of my time there. But then I realized that I did not have it in me to be mean to people. And a memoir, you,

If it's going to be of any value, you're certainly going to be mean to yourself at times, but you're going to have to tell stories about the people you work with that maybe don't put them in the best light. Maybe a mistake they made that led to something happening or they weren't up to the job. And I just didn't have it in me. These people are that I worked with cared so much about what they were doing. And I certainly didn't want to.

have people think, here's the guy. He came in from the network. He came in for this big Washington experience and he laughed at us behind our backs and he made fun of us. And I thought, you know, I still can tell the funny stories, but I make up people and they are collections of people I've known. So none of the characters are real people. There are stories that are

almost everything is based on reality. You know, the Thanksgiving story, the literal quote that I shared with you is in the book. Then it gets a little crazier in the book. But I don't hint in any way at who said that to me, because that would be a good example. I don't want that person to feel like I was angry at them or making fun of them. In a memoir, that's always an issue of how many

names do you use? How much, how many bad stories do you tell? This was, and this also was more fun to take a chance and make stuff up, which I had never done and which is the opposite of all my training. And I didn't think, I never thought I had a book in me, especially a fiction book, until the very day that I thought I had it in me. And it was another thing that just sort of

looking at the journal, I went, know, I think I can write fiction about this. And then I just started organizing characters and plot. And I hired a developmental editor, which, you know, helped me with things. she, funny, in the first version she saw, she said, this feels a little too much like a memoir. And she was right, because the first couple of drafts were too close to true. So that set me off to make more.

Matt Gilhooly (51:17)
You're like, well.

David S Bernknopf (51:26)
exaggerations, hopefully make some stories funnier, but always it has at its core. My book has at its core, a respect for the business and an explanation of why I think journalism is still important and necessary to people. Traditional journalism, not to take anything away from podcasts, which I love, but it's this conversation is different from doing a data dive into how

Matt Gilhooly (51:47)
Mm-hmm.

David S Bernknopf (51:56)
taxpayer money is used.

Matt Gilhooly (51:58)
Exactly. Yeah. I think there's certainly a place for so many different things. And I think now we have so many ways to get across. mean, there are investigative journalism podcasts as well that that share those things that you're mentioning, like a lot of the things I know about Alaska are because of some of these true crime podcasts about, you know, places in Alaska and the crime and all the things that that happened there. And so, yes, and

David S Bernknopf (52:25)
One of

the subplots in my book is, I'm sure something you've seen in these true crime podcasts or documentaries, is this ongoing tension between the Alaska Native community and the state police over whether missing or potentially murdered Indigenous, particularly women, those cases are investigated with the same energy that a crime against someone

of a higher status in the city of Anchorage would be investigated. Part of the reality is, so if there's a murder out in one of these off the road indigenous communities, the state police don't have, there's no police department in those towns. The state police have to get a plane and fly in and the weather has to be good in these remote places. And so part of it is that it is much more difficult to even get

an investigator to the scene of the crime, but it's also the lack of political power the Alaska Native community at the time. by being so far away physically, they are far away psychically and mentally to the people who make decisions.

Matt Gilhooly (53:35)
Well, and also just the community being more private as well. So it's probably a lot harder to get information from.

David S Bernknopf (53:43)
huge issue. And that was a big part of my education was I'm a white guy. So getting Alaska Natives to talk to me about healthcare or education in their communities, they are concerned that you're not really, you don't have their best interests at heart. yeah, telling those stories is hard, very hard.

Matt Gilhooly (53:45)
other people.

Right. Or there's some kind of exploitation or something. Yeah.

Yeah. For all sorts of reasons. Yeah, they shouldn't. It's, it's a, an interesting story because like I said before, there's so many people that don't think of Alaska very often. I don't know if that's a bad thing. I don't know if that's a good thing. don't

I don't know, it just is. And it's sad when you hear these particular stories because, you know, they're Americans as well. And I don't know, part of me feels guilty now.

David S Bernknopf (54:30)
I

When I tell people that maybe 100,000 people total live in what are called off the road towns where there's no road that goes there. You fly in, maybe you take a boat if the weather is okay, maybe a snowmobile, which they call snow machines. And you get yelled at if you dare call them a snowmobile that you get corrected. So you might have a nurse practitioner in your town.

with two beds and she can prescribe extra strength Tylenol. So those are Americans. Those are American citizens paying taxes and they have virtually no healthcare. Now, I don't know that there's a solution to that if your community is that isolated. It's not like you can build a hospital for a town of 500 people, but it is, they are Americans.

Matt Gilhooly (55:36)
Yeah, I, it's a it's a hard I don't think there's a way for me to reconcile my feelings right now about it all. But there is a guilt that feels more prevalent now that we've had this conversation. So thank you. Now I think it's important to have these conversations and realize like the life that we're living, even in America is not necessarily going to be the same if we're somewhere else in the country.

David S Bernknopf (55:49)
you

Matt Gilhooly (56:03)
we adjust and that's fine. You can do that in the lower 48 as well, but it's quite different when you go somewhere like that and you created a story around it based on your own story. So I think people are gonna have a fun journey learning about your story too.

David S Bernknopf (56:21)
I hope so. want my story to be fun and I also want it to be serious. That's not always easy. I will leave it to readers to decide if I succeed, but I feel a sense of accomplishment and I feel like I did what I set out to do. What more can I say than that?

Matt Gilhooly (56:22)
Yeah.

I mean, you've led this life of fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, and then you've made a decision that allowed you to slow down a little bit and see things maybe in a more calm manner and make decisions in that way. So now you get to live this life of knowing both. Do ever think about that David making the decision between the almost CNN and the Ohio town?

David S Bernknopf (57:04)
I think about that all the time. There's a book, what is it? The Midnight Library, I think is the title of it. And idea is that every one of us has a library of infinite books based on every decision we make. And I don't know whether my life would have been better or worse. I certainly wouldn't have met the mother of my children had I gone to Steubenville, but maybe I'd have been.

a CBS executive instead of a CNN executive, or maybe I'd have gotten so tired of being in a grimy town, sorry, Steubenville, that I would have left the business and gone to teach somewhere. Who knows? You can't know. But I do think about it a lot.

Matt Gilhooly (57:49)
Are you

glad you made the decision you did?

David S Bernknopf (57:52)
100%, 100%. My time at CNN was so amazing. I traveled the whole world. I covered presidential elections. I covered disasters. I covered happy stories. I covered everything everywhere. And I made the most wonderful friends who I still talk to all the time.

and we see each other because we all had that, especially those who came at the beginning, we had this crazy experience of trying to get this thing on the air when everybody thought it couldn't work. I mean, it's kind of funny to think back on it when the joke was you're going to do 24 hour news, you can't possibly fill it up. You can't, there's no way that you can fill 24 hours of news. And now like,

24 hours isn't enough. Now you need the unlimited space of the internet because there's never ending stories. But people really, in 1980 when we went on the air, people really questioned, could you fill up the time?

Matt Gilhooly (58:51)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

I bet.

I, to be fair, I don't know that they can fill up 24 hours these days. It feels like they repeat a lot often. Yeah. Do you look at CNN now and see any elements of the CNN that you remember?

David S Bernknopf (59:09)
I'm not saying fill it up with good stuff

I do see certain elements because when something happens, when there's a natural disaster, a plane crash, a war, you still see bits of CNN's global reach with reporters, more reporters out there than anybody else. But it's become, you know, it's certainly become more of a series of talk shows now than it was

Not that we didn't have talk shows, but it's a lot cheaper to have so-called experts and pundits on retainer and bring them into a studio than it is to send someone like me with a crew and a reporter to Africa for a week, and then you have to hire a fixer and you have to hire security. It's expensive. It's expensive.

Matt Gilhooly (1:00:11)
Yeah.

Well, and even now, I mean, since the pandemic, when we all realize we could have our own studios in house, you have all those pundits now that a lot of them don't even ever go to the studio to be a part of a regular, like regular part of a show. So there's a lot that's changed. Just curious if you see any remnants of the CNN you remember.

David S Bernknopf (1:00:32)
remnants and I still care about the place and I still have some friends who work there. I was talking to a videographer who started just a couple of years after me and he's been talking about retiring for 10 years now but he can't walk away from the excitement. He's a bit of an adrenaline junkie and you don't get that in many other jobs.

Matt Gilhooly (1:00:55)
Yeah, which you probably understand.

Yeah. Well, that's why you're you're project based these days and you're you're finding ways to fill your time and ways that also Okay, well, that's good. You're filling your cup in the ways that serve serve you hopefully. If people listen to your story and want to read your book or they want to like tell you their stories, sorry. This what's the best way to find you or get in your circle or be part of your world?

David S Bernknopf (1:01:06)
I'm not an adrenaline junkie. I never was.

have

a website for the book called twoyearsbook.com. T-W-O-Y-E-A-R-S-B-O-O-K.com. No spaces, just twoyearsbook.com. And there's a way to reach out to me there. And you can buy the book anywhere online. Books are sold. It's out there. I hope people will buy it. do also, I have a Goodreads page where I encourage

people to ask me questions about anything. I'm an open book. I spent my life asking hard questions of people. I'm one of those people. I had president, the original president, George Bush kind of jokingly got mad at me and called him. He had his staff, they dubbed me son of Sam, you know, the serial killer. And I was curious why they gave me that nickname.

Matt Gilhooly (1:02:14)
That's great.

David S Bernknopf (1:02:18)
just because I was yell hard questions. And it didn't even occur to me. Do you remember what the real name of Son of Sam was? He was David Berkowitz. And so they thought it was really funny, David Bernkopf, he's a serial killer in terms of the questions he yells at us. So I don't know, it wasn't all that funny to me, but now it's a story to tell.

Matt Gilhooly (1:02:27)
I don't.

Yeah. Well, I encourage people that are listening to these episodes, if they hear a part of their story or they feel like something you said resonated with them, even if it's not the meaty part of your story, if it's just something, I encourage them to reach out because I know the power of sharing your story, like personally sharing your story with someone or how it connects other people. So I encourage people to do that. So I'm glad to hear there's a contact.

form on your website. highly encourage it.

David S Bernknopf (1:03:13)
I look forward to it. asked

questions my whole life. I feel like I can answer them now.

Matt Gilhooly (1:03:19)
Yeah, for sure. And the connection piece is so important. As you know, with your two years in Alaska, the connection is very important for a lot of people. And so I highly encourage people to check out your website, order your book, reach out to you, go on Goodreads and ask you some questions. think all those areas someone can do all or one of them and make a good opportunity. Yeah.

David S Bernknopf (1:03:46)
And I thank you for this conversation because it really

did make, just the preparation made me think about that moment. It really did. And I think we hit the nail on the head. My children gave me the permission slip.

Matt Gilhooly (1:03:55)
Yeah.

Yep. And it's not that you necessarily needed that, but having that makes the decision so much easier for you to do and move forward with and, and be proud of. Yeah. And that like, yes, this might be crazy, but also this might be wonderful and something to try out. And it seems like it, gave you a lot of things that you can carry forward. And so I appreciate you just being willing to have this conversation in whatever direction it happened to go today is just really grateful that you

David S Bernknopf (1:04:08)
Right.

It was freeing.

Matt Gilhooly (1:04:32)
chose to do that.

David S Bernknopf (1:04:33)
I'm grateful you chose to have me.

Matt Gilhooly (1:04:38)
Well, with that, will not say thank you again, but I will. Thank you for being a part of this. I will be back next week with a brand new episode, but I really appreciate it, David.

David S Bernknopf (1:04:42)
You

Matt Gilhooly (1:04:48)
Thank you for listening to the Life Shift Podcast. If you wanna learn more, go to www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com.

There you can check out all the different episodes. You can check out the blog, some of the reviews for the podcast and the Life Shift journal. Links are there so you can purchase your own copy, whether in digital or print format. Thanks again.