Television career
On the evening of June 8, 1966, Kurtis left a bar review class at Washburn to fill in at WIBW-TV to anchor the 6 o'clock news. Severe weather was approaching Topeka, so Kurtis stayed to update the weather reports. At 7:00 p.m., while on the air, a tornado was sighted by WIBW cameraman Ed Rutherford southwest of the city. Within 15 seconds another sighting came in: "It's wiped out an apartment complex." Kurtis's warning – "For God's sake, take cover" – became synonymous with the tornado outbreak sequence of June 1966 that left 18 dead and injured hundreds more. Kurtis and the WIBW broadcast team remained on the air for 24 straight hours to cover the tornado and its aftermath. As the only television station in town and one of the few radio stations left undamaged, WIBW became a communications hub for emergency operations. The experience changed Kurtis's career path from law to broadcast news. Within three months of seeing his work covering the tornado, WBBM-TV in Chicago hired Kurtis and set the stage for a 30-year career with CBS.
The year 1966 in Chicago was the beginning of a tumultuous four years, and as a reporter and anchor Kurtis was in the middle of historic events. He covered the neighborhood fires that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and again when Robert F. Kennedy was shot. Protests against the Vietnam War dominated the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which Kurtis covered. In 1969, Kurtis produced a documentary about Iva Toguri D'Aquino, "Tokyo Rose", the first interview since her conviction for treason in 1949. His reporting, along with that of Ron Yates of the Chicago Tribune, helped persuade President Gerald Ford to pardon her in 1977. His legal education came into play when he covered the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial in 1969, which led to a job with CBS News in Los Angeles as correspondent. One of his first assignments was covering the Charles Manson murder trial for 10 months. He also covered the murder trials of Angela Davis and Juan Corona and the Pentagon Papers trial of Daniel Ellsberg.
In 1973, Kurtis returned to Chicago to co-anchor the 10 p.m. newscast with Walter Jacobson at WBBM-TV. In 1978, his investigative unit broke the story of Agent Orange, a defoliant sprayed on U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. After a dramatic screening of the documentary in Washington, D.C., the Veterans Administration issued guidelines to diagnose and compensate those veterans affected by Agent Orange. Kurtis returned to Vietnam in 1980 to cover the Vietnamese side of the story and while there, discovered some 15,000 Vietnamese children conceived and left behind by Americans when the U.S. left in 1975. A story Kurtis wrote for The New York Times Magazine was instrumental in obtaining special status for the children to immigrate to the United States.
In 1982, Kurtis joined Diane Sawyer on The CBS Morning News, the network broadcast from New York City. The two were also on the CBS Early Morning News, which aired an hour earlier on most CBS stations. He also anchored three CBS Reports: The Plane That Fell from the Sky, The Golden Leaf, and The Gift of Life.
He returned to WBBM-TV in 1985. In 1986, Kurtis hosted a four-part science series on PBS called The Miracle Planet as well as a four-part series in 1987 on the Central Intelligence Agency. He formed his own documentary production company, Kurtis Productions, in 1988, the same year he produced "Back to Chernobyl" for the PBS series Nova. Kurtis narrated nearly 1,000 documentaries, and Kurtis Productions produced nearly 500 documentaries for series such as The New Explorers on PBS; Investigative Reports and Cold Case Files for A&E; and Investigating History for the History Channel. He also hosted American Justice, produced by Towers Productions. For CNBC, the company has produced over 200 episodes of American Greed.
In 1994, Kurtis obtained a videotape showing Richard Speck, convicted of murdering eight student nurses in Chicago in 1966, having jailhouse sex and using drugs within the maximum security facility known as Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois. He aired a report on WBBM-TV and produced a documentary for A&E Network, resulting in the most sweeping changes to the Illinois penal system in its history.
Kurtis re-teamed with Walter Jacobson in 2010 to host WBBM-TV's 6 p.m. newscast; they had co-hosted the station's dominant 10 p.m. newscast from 1973 until Kurtis's move in 1982 to The CBS Morning News. After achieving the hoped-for ratings boost, Kurtis and Jacobson retired as news anchors in 2013.
Kurtis has received two Peabody Awards, numerous Emmy Awards, awards from the Overseas Press Club, and a DuPont Award. He has been inducted into the Illinois and Kansas Halls of Fame. In 1998, he was awarded the University of Kansas William Allen White citation.
He is the narrator of a 1998 multimedia book by Joe Garner, We Interrupt This Broadcast, with a foreword by Walter Cronkite and an epilogue by Brian Williams, which was a sequel to the Edward R. Murrow record album I Can Hear It Now. Kurtis has authored three books: On Assignment (1984), Death Penalty on Trial (2004), and Prairie Table Cookbook (2008).
In June 2015, Kurtis commenced lead hosting duties of Through the Decades, a daily news magazine that covers historical events from that particular day since the advent of television. His co-hosts are reporters Kerry Sayers and Ellee Pai Hong. The program ended when Decades was rebranded to Catchy Comedy in February 2023.
