Pat Kreitlow Signs Off: “Now, To Be Fair...”

People look back on your work.

What do you hope they'll say about TV's Pat Krightlow?

They'll say, Pat Krightlow is an ignorant piece of shit.

He has a lot

of nerve stealing breathable air that he does not deserve from the rest of us.

I could probably close that one up now.

Hello and welcome to the Dr. Kristen Lyerle Show.

I am Dr. Kristen Lyerle and I love doing this show.

And I love it because of the people.

I get to have all of these incredible conversations with the coolest people on earth, including my dear friend, TV's Pat Crightlow, who recently announced his retirement.

Pat has been a longtime broadcaster in the Eau Claire area.

He's a former Wisconsin state senator and he really has become a fixture at the intersection of journalism and politics.

He's taught so many of us across Wisconsin about what the deal is with school funding and property taxes and the budget and all of

this mysterious stuff about government that we really don't understand but he does because he's done all of it and he explains it in a way that really makes it accessible and helps us be better people in our communities, civic engagement, all of that stuff that we know we need to do better but we don't have the resources at least now we won't because Pat's retiring but before he retires I

Convinced him to come on and have a conversation about his career What drove him to pursue journalism how he got involved in politics and what happens next?

So I hope you enjoy it.

How are you TVs pack right low?

I'm good.

How are you?

Ready to chat a little bit about this is your life Let's just talk

Oh, okay.

Because we're already rolling.

We're rolling.

Here we are.

I did that on purpose because sometimes I forget to hit the record button.

Here we are.

It's all on tape now.

Anything you say, can and will be used.

So here you are in your plaid shirt and your house.

One more time.

One more time.

Having signed off for the...

semi last time.

I mean, technically the last time.

Yeah, I mean, seven years of up North news and what was it 500 radio shows and and then all of the other TV radio and political jobs before that.

So yeah, it's time to start a new count.

Maybe beaches to visit or something like that.

This is not your first go around on beaches to visit to be fair.

It is not but the last go around was you know, actually

part of my my work life.

I just chose to work on an island was also and I'm going to go back to using it for of you know, leisure purposes, which is a much better use of beach life, by the way.

Very true.

Very true.

Why don't we go back to the beginning?

Oh,

young Pat Kratlow in St.

Paul, Minnesota.

Well, St.

Paul and Eau Claire, I always remind people that I had two hometowns growing up.

Thanks to the magic of divorce, a mom that was in St.

Paul, a dad that moved to Eau Claire.

He worked for the Chicago Northwestern Railroad and he happened to work on the line daily between Eau Claire and St.

Paul.

So when getting divorced, how convenient, you just moved to the end of the line.

And that's how from the age of seven onward, the Chippewa Valley has also been.

and a first or second home to me.

I don't think I knew that.

I think I always thought of you as St.

Paul.

Certainly where I did most of my growing up, but again, plenty of weekends were spent in Eau Claire.

And when the time came to decide on a college, UW Eau Claire seemed like a perfectly nice place to go.

So I did.

And thanks to that, I was able to study both journalism and politics.

because I was very confused over what should be my major.

As it turns out, that would be a persistent theme through the rest of your life.

It really would,

yes.

And I like to tell people that when I was wrestling with that as a college freshman, my advisor was in the political science program.

Professor Thomas Barthony, he talked to me for a while and said, you need to go into journalism.

And I wasn't sure why he was kicking me out of political science.

But he said, you clearly insist on seeing

all sides of an issue and go into political science, you tend to take one point of view and you stick with it.

And I thought, well, that makes sense.

I do like to study all sides of an issue and talk about it.

And so it was not until I was in my 40s that I looked at the possibility of a political career and said, well,

Why shouldn't you want somebody in politics who likes to see all sides of an issue?

You can still be true to a particular, you know, personal worldview, but you shouldn't be, you know, you shouldn't have blinders on.

You should be able to see multiple parts of an issue.

And I think it served me well for my short political career.

I think that that's what people would expect.

leaders, elected leaders to have not just one perspective, but to hear them and actually like listen and hear them and then be able to explain why they're making a certain decision.

But there have been times in your political career where that has served you well and where it has not served you well.

Has it never not served me well?

I suppose.

I mean, I'm thinking about maybe back in the day when it was time to draw some legislative maps.

And you thought, hey, it would be very logical.

Be very logical to run on as a reformer, which is what I wanted to do.

I'd been in the legislature for four years.

I was getting set to run for reelection in 2010.

And I definitely saw the need for nonpartisan redistricting and proposed running on that kind of a reform.

platform along with some other ideas.

Uh but uh I and and along with uh my fellow freshman senator Jim Sullivan from Milwaukee uh we were we were dismissed and uh told told don't worry uh we're gonna win in 2010 and and we're gonna redraw the maps the way we want them which as well

now no did not work out that way at all so I I still think I had the better instincts at the time but I did not have I did not have the tenure or the title that would allow me to put that into into action but I I do think that I was right then and and right now that even though Democrats have once again won big majorities

they would do very well to embrace nonpartisan redistricting because there's a lot of things that the politicians that you like should be able to do, but maybe drawing their own district shouldn't be one of them anymore.

I think history would show and the battles we have had over fair maps in Wisconsin for well over a decade now would show that you probably were on the right side of history for this

one.

I definitely will stick to my guns on that one.

Okay, can we go way, way back to when you were in, was it grade school, middle school, high school?

When you first got involved in politics, what did that look like and what drew you to that?

It was actually a counselor in middle school who recognized that I was, you know,

board in class, I was working ahead and that I needed some other kinds of challenges.

And again, he he listened to me and

then just started dialing the phone and he called my local legislator and said, Hey, I've got this middle schooler here.

He's he's young, but he's definitely got this interest in in politics.

He actually wrote a new he wrote a newspaper on his own for his school that he just made multiple copies of and taped onto the walls.

So we need to get him out of the school for a while.

And that's how I ended up with a weekly internship.

in the Minnesota State Capitol, and it's where I fell in love with state-level politics, state legislatures, and state government, and understood how very important it is to have good leaders in state government.

So yeah, from the late 1970s onward, I have been a creature of capitals.

It is kind of funny that it started with a newspaper that you generated and taped on the wall and you got sent to the Capitol that you loved and ended up coming back to journalism.

It's like your history has just, it's all been woven together.

There's a lot of weaving going on in there.

Absolutely.

The only.

the only difference being that I thought that it would all be happening in Minnesota,

you know,

living in St.

Paul, the state capital, but then, you know, as, as often happens, you know,

there's a girl involved or a boy involved, depending on each person's story.

And in, you know, meeting a nice farm girl from near Green Bay, I ended up, you know, getting married and raising a family here in Wisconsin, which eventually took me into Wisconsin political news and into the Wisconsin State Capitol.

And it's certainly been a path I would have chosen, you know, 100 times out of 100.

Yes.

So you and Sherry met.

in Eau Claire, going to college together at a bar.

At a bar on Water Street, just another typical Wisconsin love story where she walked into a bar and was blocking my view of a baseball game.

So I asked if she'd like to have a seat next to me and we just started talking and we're still talking, you know, all these 43 years later.

And still watching baseball.

And still watching baseball.

Except now I've won her over to my side and she watches the games and follows them too.

Uh-huh, very nice, very nice.

So then when you graduated from college you went into journalism.

What was your first job?

My first job was up in Rice Lake at WAQE, which no longer exists up there, but it was a small radio station.

So I would commute up to, I'm sorry, we moved up to Rice Lake right out of college.

Sherry actually commuted from Rice Lake down to UW Eau Claire for her senior year of college, being a year younger than me.

So we did one year in Rice Lake and then we had to.

pull up routes because she'd been accepted into medical school and that took us down into the Milwaukee area where I worked for WBKV was the name of the station at the time in West Bend Wisconsin and was a one-man newsroom at that station as well and then

We, after med school, moved to the Twin Cities for Sherry's OBGYN residency.

And so I was out of the journalism business for a while while our two daughters were very, very young and growing.

And Sherry was the one that had the insane hours.

So I went and got myself a normal job for a while.

But then when her residency was over and it was time to, for her to hang up a shingle, she did it with Marshfield Clinic in Chippewa Falls.

And so we've, we've been in Chippewa Falls now.

for the most part, you know, for 31 years now, and when we moved here, I started at Wax Radio for a year, and then a job opened up at Channel 13 in Eau Claire, and I ended up starting as a producer, then a reporter, a weekend anchor, and then the weeknight anchor for a number of years.

Before I had that infamous midlife crisis after the 2004 election and decided that I probably was the only person who could unseat my my far-right conservative state senator and I was right I left a perfectly good job behind the anchor desk immediately pissed off 50% of the population Because nobody knew my my political leanings until that moment and it's been a a hybrid of politics and journalism ever since

So

we all have opinions and we all have leanings but many of us are reluctant to share which team we play for because we don't want to lose friends and we don't want to make enemies.

When you made that decision that must have been as a journalist and I think it's really sacred as a journalist because you don't want people to think that you are reporting on something because you're biased.

What was that like for you to make that transition?

I think it was born out of frustration.

I had spent, of course, all of my career to that point trying to be very careful, very down the middle as much as possible.

It certainly didn't mean that I didn't call things out one way or the other as I saw them.

In fact, as a little aside here, it was shortly after I first got elected to the state Senate as a Democrat that I was talking with Congressman Ron Kind.

And noticing that he was

having a little bit of difficulty warming up to me, and he, by his own admission later, said it was because I had asked him some pretty tough questions over the years, which, you know, so he thought either I was a Republican or just somebody hostile, I was just doing my job

as

a good...

journalist.

But the frustration that came after the 2004 election, I'd already seen the 2000 election, of course, which I think was allowed to go in the wrong direction because of the political leanings of US Supreme Court justices.

Prior to that, we had seen the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, again, as part of a whitewater investigation that was wildly off the rails.

And so by the time we get to 2004, where John Kerry is being, you know, swift-boated by George W. Bush and by Carl Rove and others, the personal crisis, I guess, is the way to put it, is...

After that election I spent a lot of time saying I don't think I can look into the camera every night with a straight face and pretend that

both parties are equal, that they're equally bad, that they're equally culpable.

That is not the case.

One party actually wants to provide healthcare.

One party actually wants a tax system that is fair for all.

And on and on, the examples went that I just decided that while I could keep up the act and have a successful career,

I would much rather take on a new role where I was advocating for the things that I felt not enough people were advocating for in political circles.

Do you think, given the environment that we're in right now, and hopefully we are getting away from that, but do you think that it's just been a slippery slope since then, since like 2000?

Is that when things really started to change?

Or had we been on this trajectory where politics was getting uglier and more difficult, I guess I don't know, I don't quite know how to, I think you

know what I'm trying to say.

I can say that there have always been, of course, jerks in politics.

The old saying is it's not beanbag.

It is a full contact sport.

But yes, even though bad behavior has its ups and downs in politics in this country as well as everywhere else,

it has been on a on a rise and in many ways, you know, people have their own starting points.

Uh, some people go back to, you know, Barry Goldwater and things like that.

I, I personally go back to Newt Gingrich who in 1994 decided to embrace the politics of obstruction and the politics of insults.

Um, you know, one of, one of the

you know, lightning bolt moments for me was reading a book called The System by the late David Broder, longtime Washington Post political columnist.

And in the opening of the book, he spells out a conversation with Newt Gingrich, who had decided that

the newly elected president, Bill Clinton, was going to propose healthcare reform and that he decided right then and there that he was gonna oppose whatever Clinton did in 1993 and use that to campaign on in 1994.

Now, as naive as this may sound, my reaction was very much one of, how dare you?

Here we have somebody that...

wants to tackle health care, which was, of course, in the early 90s, first really becoming known as a massive burden on American families.

And rather than try to, you know, have the discussions that Democrats and Republicans have had for generations of, you're not gonna get everything you want, I'm not gonna get everything I want, but we have these constituents who are in need, let's do something about it.

His was all about politics and power.

And, you know, I really see from that point onward an increase in the bad behavior that was already out there, but certainly more so in seeking power for the sake of power rather than actually trying to engage in public service and solve the problems of your constituents.

Yeah, it was like the problems weren't actually the issue.

It was the I'm taking my ball and going home if I can't have everything.

Yes.

And you know, the on the opposite side of that was a book that I didn't read right away when it came out.

But the late Dave Durenberger was a US senator from Minnesota back in the 1980s, I believe 80s 90s.

And he wrote a book called was it when when Republicans were progressive or something like that.

And you know, keep in mind the progress

movement started with Republicans more so than Democrats.

Right.

And the point that he was making is that you can still have your conservative principles, especially being a fiscal conservative.

You can have you know social issues that you are conservative on.

but you can still want to solve problems and that's what he saw lacking in in his party like he and a lot of other old guard republicans watch the party slip away that that party is dead

that party

is long gone but it was a party that actually wanted to work have conversations collaborations compromises and get things done and you know the the large question is whether recent events

are going to steer us back in that direction for the party that represents the conservative side of the spectrum and I don't like sounding cynical but I'm not seeing any signs of it.

This most recent election wasn't wasn't anything that the current Republican party is going to take any lessons from other than

Get more billionaire money and and and run more obstruction.

I hope I'm wrong But frankly until another generation comes up that wants to take the party in a more public service oriented direction I think this is what we're stuck with and by the way, this has happened before you had a Republican Party that like I said became progressive

You had a democratic party that was wildly anti civil rights until Hubert Humphrey and others took their party in a new direction.

So we may see changes.

They're just hard to predict in the moment.

So how have you.

Through all of these years, if this started with Newt Gingrich for you, how have you not become cynical, bathing in this political water all of this time?

You keep moving forward.

You keep looking at things from different directions and you somehow stay optimistic.

Well, I think a lot of people would disagree with that, and that's why I chuckled as well.

But my cynicism is geared toward the people who have decided that politics is just a sport, and I'm

on

team red no matter what, even if the president is covering up or engaged in pedophilia, even if he's started a war after promising not to start forever wars.

But it's a sport, and he's got a red jersey on, so I got to back him up no matter what.

Democrats have not really had that issue.

You look at, you know, Bob Menendez in New Jersey and no shortage of other Democrats that when they do something wrong, we're like, you're out.

That's it.

Because, you know, we're actually trying to get something done.

We're trying to listen to, you know, the angels of our better nature.

And so, yes, that part isn't cynical.

The part that still wants to engage in service.

It's just that as the years have gone by, and I've gotten a little older and crabbier, I've been less likely to call out, you know, hypocrisy, lies, crimeing, whatever you want to call it, all the things where I had to bite my tongue all those years as a journalist.

I now have no hesitation to call them out from where I sit now.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you're polished.

You're experienced.

You're knowledgeable, but I'm gonna go back to something Before you were this person because you haven't always carried all of this confidence and stuff with you think back to a time When you were young when you were I mean you're still young when you were a rookie What is the worst thing you can remember doing on the air?

back during that time or the most embarrassing thing.

Oh, I think that there were just times where I was gonna say I allowed myself to be intimidated and that's not exactly correct.

You don't allow yourself to be intimidated.

You either are or you aren't and then at some point you can look back and say I should not have been that intimidated by something.

There was, for example, a time when I

However, I turned a phrase, and it wasn't about Newt Gingrich, but it was about another house speaker.

I want to say Tom Delay, but don't hold me to it.

And then there was a prominent business owner.

in the Chippewa Valley who said that he wanted to meet with me and I said, okay, that's fine.

And so I did.

And he, you know, at that point decided, you know, he just upgraded me one way and the other, pointing to pictures of himself with that speaker and other Republican politicians and about how these are good people.

And, you know, I have to watch what I say because I might malign them.

And of course, I was like, oh, I certainly did not want to, you know, offend you.

by, you know, having some kind of criticism of what this person said or did.

Obviously in this day and age, I would have pushed back and I had pushed back hard, you know, but when, when you are younger, um, and this is not to say people should not go into journalism or politics or anything else when they're younger.

I know you can say the same thing about being a young physician and dealing with attendings.

You

look back at some point and go, wow.

If I had, you know, the experience or the backbone or the cynicism, you know, then, you know, that I have now that moment would have been handled.

completely differently.

But as it is, you know, at the time you have those conversations, you, you know, you make those mistakes.

I was once in my first radio job out of college.

I changed a story about a local business so that you wouldn't know that it was about the local business.

Because it was a funny story about a customer where things went horribly wrong.

But of course the business owner knew we were talking about his business and

we got

called on the, called on the carpet for that.

And again, you look back and go, well, that was a rookie mistake.

Um, but you, all you can do is really take those moments and either, you know, learn and grow from them, uh, or, or learn and grow in another direction.

I was once in a very, very, very short radio sales career, uh, was once.

mortified to go into a car dealer, uh, the late Ernie Von Schledhorn in Milwaukee.

The real Ernie Von Schledhorn.

The

real one, uh, you know, to, and from my little tiny radio station to try to sell him on a little bit of advertising.

And, you know, he was this large intimidating presence and he, he says, wait right here.

And he, he goes out and you know, eventually I hear laughter and everything.

And I go out and see that he's, he's just completely left me there and he's with all the other sales reps just holding core.

having a good time.

And again, somebody older, wiser, cynical, have more talents, whatever, would go right over there and confront him and say, hey, you, I'm here to talk to you about radio sales.

Well, I of course just snuck out the door and tried not to cry, you know.

But I learned something from him.

And all of those things that give us setbacks, you know, you

can either let them defeat you or you can say okay at some point not right now because I don't feel so good but some point I'm gonna learn something out of this and I'm gonna put it to use and and eventually it

did.

It's such a different time now than it was so thinking back to the time when you were doing the story and you talked about a business and you tried to make it anonymous but clearly it wasn't.

Think of how that plays on social media now.

Like if you tag a business or tag a region, the geo locating that happens on Instagram, people are much more likely to see it.

So anybody can do that.

And here you were a trained professional getting into trouble for that.

Here's how naive I was at the beginning of social media.

I left the TV station, you know, in 2005 when, you know, internet web pages for new sites were still in their infancy, basically.

And there were these comment sections below news stories.

And I all but begged management to not have comment sections because I said, we have to adhere to these journalistic standards and any

any goofball can get on and save these things.

And I used a specific example, our local newspaper, the Leader Telegram, did a story on a different prominent business owner.

And it was a very positive story.

Somebody gets in the comments section and says something about this person's divorce or having an affair or whatever the case may be, the kind of thing you could never put into the news story.

Now, the

the person that I was having this discussion with said, well, we'll just delete the comment.

Well, what do you think came back the next day?

Because that's the infamous bottomless barrel of ink that we used to talk about for newspapers.

It is quite literally a bottomless barrel of ink in social media.

So my point at the time, and I wish, you know, I wish time would have proven me right, is we should not have comment sections underneath news stories because you can undo

all of the ethics and the actual journalistic talent that goes into putting that story.

Now that's not the same thing as your question about social media, which is an entirely different beast, but it was, that was where I was at the time, seeing the danger of comment sections.

Then we get to Facebook, Twitter and everything that followed with.

It's just one big long comment section.

It's not a comment section on a particular story.

It's everything and we you know now have a a world that can't Can't police itself in that way.

I said again rather naively at the time And I think I used YouTube as as the example rather than Facebook because you thought well, how do you not get?

Videos on there that children shouldn't see or or other things like that

And my feeling was that these are publishers.

YouTube is a publisher and therefore is responsible for everything that goes out.

And if they don't have enough bodies to monitor the videos, that's too bad.

The videos pile up.

Until they can be monitored and then go out well obviously the other viewpoint one out and that's that well YouTube and the others They're not a publisher.

They're a platform and a platform isn't held to the same standards We're just putting whatever videos come in we put them right back out and again if if I had been

you know, somehow able to run, you know, the FCC and the SEC and anything else that would have regulated at the time, I would have said, no, no, no, no.

No, you are a publisher.

If your, if your work, and this is your work, if you're putting somebody else's video out there and there's, there's a problem with it, then there's a problem with you or you shouldn't put it out.

And there's your.

easiest example of why I am too old for this working world and why I am right to retire.

But you have adapted.

You took that old school Walter Cronkite kind of journalism ideal, the standard, and you have transitioned

through the YouTube era, and here you are in ugly Twitter world, where as you said, everything is just a comment, and there are serious journalists there, and you have to be on Twitter if you're a serious journalist.

But you've been able to make that transition.

I've been able to do it by, yes, the standards that are out there, the way I guess you would put it is, if you're gonna compare the internet to the Wild West, and many people have, well, then you better learn how to be a pretty decent gunslinger.

because there are plenty of other people who will take their shots, or they'll just throw bricks, you know, or

something

like that, and you'd better know, you know, how the system works, you better know how to handle the stuff that comes in at you, and you'd better be able to put something out.

And I don't just mean taking shots at other people.

I mean, you know, your posts, your facts, your opinion columns, your videos, whatever they are, and you better do it in a way that, you know, the whole peanut gallery that's watching the okay corral is looking at it going, I like that guy.

I like what he's putting out there.

So yeah, I still, I'm definitely a relic of the gatekeeper era of media and journalism, but.

the alternative is to just throw up your hands and say, well, people are gonna say whatever it is that they wanna say, and I choose instead to believe that you can get pretty good at what you're gonna say, and you can get pretty good at choosing when not to engage.

There have been plenty of times where...

I don't respond to something or I respond to somebody like one time and say, hey, that might have been a bit much there, you know, and then if they continue with the insults or whatever, well, then you just, you mute them.

And that's the more responsible course of action than say a soon to be former congressman who felt the need to respond to every insult with another insult.

And

that only carries you for so long.

It does get entertaining, though, for the people who are just watching.

Oh, for the

sure.

Absolutely.

And if that's what we want, if we want our politicians to just be entertainers, well, hell, then just to, you know, turn a reality star into.

Oh, never mind.

We did that.

Still got a chip on your shoulder over that, don't

you?

Of course, you are referring to the 7th Congressional District and your race with Sean Duffy.

Oh, no, I was talking

about Donald Trump.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's that guy too.

There

was just one big amalgamation of like,

whoa.

It's all of reality TV where people wanted to say when I was running against Sean Duffy in 2012, well, what's the difference?

You're both on TV.

And

I was just like, are you kidding me?

Are you kidding me with this?

One of us has been fact-based and informative.

Then the other danced in his underwear in a window balcony or something.

And we thought that that was entertaining.

Don't

compare me to

him.

And now preaches about Piety, but also talks about Sidney Sweeney's boobs.

The hypocrisy never ends with that crowd.

It's all a show to them.

And we are not in any way, shape or form, better off for it.

at any point do you think in the future we are going to get back to being more serious because I remember a time like when I was a kid where journalism was serious my parents watched the news it wasn't a big jokie thing but now it is a very different environment and the people access news and information so differently I

think we are living in the era now of the personal brand

that even when working for somebody else, your personal brand is what will make or break you more than the platform that you're on.

Here's what I mean by that.

Up North News is part of Courier Newsroom, and for the first few years that I was at Up North News, everything was basically under the Courier or the Up North News umbrella.

There was very little that had personal branding to it.

My CEO, Tara McGowan and others, however, recognized the trend that was coming and then encouraged us all to engage in personal branding of products.

And so the newsletter got to be much more of, you know, Pat Crichtlow's newsletter and we created Pat Crichtlow's radio show is no longer Up North News Radio.

It was, you know, mornings with Pat Crichtlow because they realized that people nowadays

respond to a person and their brand much more so than CBS News or Channel 2 in Green Bay or whatever the case may be.

So to answer your question, there will be people of all types coming up through the ranks of media, of TV news, of newsletters and podcasts.

Some will be serious.

and because they are good at what they do in some way, shape or form.

Maybe it's the way that they're personable.

Maybe it's the knowledge base that they bring.

Maybe it's just the joke they tell at the end of an otherwise serious story.

Whatever the case may be, that personal brand is gonna connect with people and then those people will either stick with that platform or they'll move on to other ones and people will, some people will move with the person.

And other audiences will just stay with the platform and say, well, who's coming along next?

There will be room for anybody of any ability, whether they're very serious, very funny, investigatory journalism, or just sarcastic views on the news of the day.

It's just that they have to be good.

They have to be good storytellers.

The audience has to feel a connection with them.

There's something real about them.

because we have such a fractured media landscape, nobody's going to get the big ratings like we used to get back when there was only one rating.

I mean, my goodness, if you got, what was it, a 12 rating or something in local TV news, that was massive.

And now a four rating is about the best that you can hope for because there's so many different options out there.

But if you can get that four and somebody else can't, well then,

that station's gonna love you or that other outlet that loves your sub-stack newsletter, they're gonna love you.

And the only way that we ever know if somebody's gonna get good or not is...

just keep going.

I mean, I would look back at a couple of my first, you know, radio newscasts and just wince, you would probably look back at one of, you know, some of your early media appearances and go, what a dork, you know, but, but it's, it's the rule of 500, which I,

I don't know who coined it first, but somebody who said, look, you gotta do something 500 times before you even start to be good at it.

Michael Jordan, the first couple of times he put up a free throw, clanged it, and he kept working, and he kept working, and he kept working, and pretty soon you get better at it, and maybe somebody gives you a chance on that platform, or maybe you just gotta go out and make your own brand out there by being, what do you kids call it, an influencer, something like that?

Something like that.

And if enough people catch,

and talk about it and pass it around.

There you are.

So I mean, there's lots of opportunity for good people to be good in different ways.

It's just that there's also now more ways than ever for people to be not good.

And I just want to make sure that I and others are calling out to people who's not goodliness is also unhelpful to things like the small D democratic process.

Yes.

So you have.

a very specific audience that turns to you and trusts you for

exactly that.

But it's Wisconsin.

You explain things so well that we all know we need to know.

How do public schools work?

What's going on with the budget and how does that work?

You understand the insides, the workings, and you help, you make us feel like we're right there.

So we get it.

Where are your fans gonna go when your voice is not there to guide us through this process,

Pat?

I appreciate that and it allows me to call this up on my screen here as I'm wrapping up my Up North News time and I'm going through some final emails.

Some of the emails have been just lovely.

Here's one.

I'm very sad to see Pat retire.

His reporting is crisp and clean.

He asks the questions that I would ask.

He keeps it factual and he's kind.

Good luck to Pat.

He will be missed.

Another one here says, best wishes, Pat, your voice will be missed by readers.

This one here says, I have enjoyed your newsletter.

You were so on point.

But then, lest I get too full of myself.

Yeah, I come back to another that, oh, let me find it because it's just so perfect.

Here it is.

Uh, do you use naughty words on your, your cast here?

Pat Krightlow is an ignorant piece of shit.

He has a lot of nerve stealing breathable air that he does not deserve from the rest of us.

He is such a clueless, I won't even say that word, that he does not realize by supporting Democrats, he is supporting Marxism in America.

I would debate that fat piece of shit anytime, any day and on and on it goes.

So I appreciate your use of the word fans.

There are a couple out there.

But there are also those reminders that, you know, you can't please all of the people all of the time.

Did Walter

Cronkite ever get fan mail like this?

Of course he did.

That's the thing.

He did.

It's just that people had to go through the, you know, the whole process of writing it down and sticking a stamp on it.

And I mean, I actually saw a local anchor, a local news anchor on social media a few days ago.

and had one of those just reaction posts where they're just looking at the camera, and then the text that she put on there was something along the lines of, it's not just that this person took the time to insult me, but he took the time to write it down, put a stamp on it, and

send it through the mail.

That's commitment.

If you're gonna commit to an insult, I mean, this guy just puts it in email, anybody can do that, but Cronkite got his share of hate mail, and even in the pre-email days,

I'd get a few notes occasionally too, usually about my hair or my ties, but you get it from everybody.

How do they insult that hair?

That is like the classic anchorman hair.

You look like a

game show host or something.

Guilty.

All right, thinking back on your illustrious career, what are you most proud of?

guess there's no one event or story it really is I'm most proud of my style I am and I I didn't think this was that tough to do but I definitely have to give credit to the people that I mean I don't know if I

emulated them so much as copied them.

But I think from a national standpoint, you think of David Brinkley

at

NBC.

At a local level, there was an anchor Dave Moore at WCCO in the cities for many years.

There were other people on the radio.

And in all cases, they were informative, but they were informative in a very conversational way.

I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've used just that word conversational to describe

my style.

It's one that um it it doesn't entirely break the fourth wall when I'm anchoring a newscast for example but I'm I'm peeking over it

you know

I'm making sure you know that I know that you know I I had this particular turn of a phrase in that story you know uh that pun or that explanation that you know brings home an issue that

everybody else has used that story and they've said, I can't cut through the jargon.

And I have tried to cut through the jargon.

Even before I went into elected politics, I loved covering politicians and I loved being able to pull back the curtain a little bit and say, all right, well, here's what they mean by a property tax levy, you know, for example.

And just take those issues and make them approachable.

The one way that other people describe it is the tell it to your mother approach,

you know

of don't just read the news Explain it like your mom is listening on a phone call or something other people reject that they say that that's that's too casual But I I think that there's a way to do it in a way that is still very much either a newscast or an explanation from an elected official or a radio show host

but does it in a way that connects with people.

So that's what I'm most proud of is just the style that I always wanted to have from the very beginning.

I think you were ahead of your time because that is really what all of these I think I'm a

throwback from another time where you had more you know folksy kind of anchors out there but then we went through the blow dried phase of everybody had to be consultant cookie cutter you know generated and we're we've moved out of that era finally and I I think if anything maybe that was my

my, my benefit, my strong suit was, you know, I was coming up in an age where consultants were really driving things in both news and politics.

And I, my basic response was, how about if we're just real?

Yeah.

Just let me do what I know is right.

Yeah.

I have good instincts.

I think so.

Yeah.

So when you look back at your time at the Capitol, is there a bill, a something?

a specific thing that you did that you're most proud of?

It's not that I did it, but I was one of the people that helped shepherd through the smoking ban in Wisconsin.

And I'm proud of it because I took a lot of heat for it because of the way that I did it.

I, when I was running in 2006, there was of course this push for a smoking ban and I said I supported it.

I'm very much a, you know, an anti-smoker would love to have seen a smoking ban.

And then I got elected and I started listening to people and I started listening to bar owners and restaurant owners all throughout my rural district.

You know, my district was part Eau Claire Chippewa Falls, but then a whole lot of rural area here in Northwest Wisconsin.

And that wasn't an act.

They were scared.

They were genuinely scared that a smoking ban was gonna put them out of business.

And the bill that was under consideration called for the smoking ban to take effect if I'm not mistaken in 30 days.

And I caused a lot of headaches and anger when I put the brakes on it and said, I am not gonna vote for this bill.

And I don't know if I was the only.

vote margin or if it was because I was chairing a committee or what it was.

But when I said, no, I'm not doing this without a longer phase in period, that got some people who had supported me extremely angry.

They want a smoking ban now.

And they thought, and I guess justifiably, that if you delay it, it will end up not happening.

And they wanted to strike while the iron was hot.

So when I pushed for something like

I wanna say 12 months and I think it ended up being 18 simply because of the way the calendar worked, how it would work out best.

Whatever that was, it was definitely not 30 days and it was not six months.

It was like 12 to 18 months or something like that.

And we all look back now.

Anybody remember that?

Nope, nobody does.

So clearly it was okay.

And what I said at the time was these bar owners, these restaurant owners, if they really feel it's gonna put them out of business,

then we gotta say that I'm fine.

You got 12 months.

Put it up for sale, make the money, but you know what?

I don't think it's gonna put you out of business, but I will go with 12 months rather than 30 days.

And you know, in hindsight, it worked perfectly.

Yeah, it was a compromise.

Yeah, a compromise.

Crazy.

I imagine

that.

Yeah, you younger listeners will have to look that up,

but this is something

that used to be done in government.

It's

crazy.

people look back on your work.

What do you hope they'll say about TV's Pat Krightlow?

They'll say Pat Krightlow is an ignorant piece of shit.

He has a

lot of nerve stealing breathable air that he does not deserve from the rest of us.

I could probably close that one up now.

What do I hope they'll say?

Well, I mean, a lot of what has been said over the past week or so since I announced my retirement that there was something there that

they found either approachable or maybe even refreshing.

You know, just different, just communicating like a real person.

I used a kind of a supper club persona in my newsletter writing.

It wasn't really a persona, though, was it?

No, it wasn't.

But I mean, the newsletter persona grew out of the way that as a news anchor, especially before going into politics, but even afterwards, I would get stopped.

in supper clubs, as well as grocery stores and other places.

And this happened a lot, where people, you know, they think you're part of the family.

You're on their TV every night, even though I don't know them.

And they would just come up and they'd say, hey, Pat, what's the deal with such and such?

You know, what's going on with this smoking ban?

Hey, are we really going to, you know, pass that bill or, you know, why are my property taxes like they are?

And the thing is they knew that, you know, the fact that they approached me told me that they knew I would try to explain something in English, in plain English.

I would do it in a way that I can't tell you how many times I use the phrase, now to be fair.

And then I would give the other point of view so that I could then say, now, having said that, here's where I come from.

And in the end, they may not have agreed

with what my opinion was, but they knew that when it came down to explaining the background, I was not going to lie to them.

I was

not going to make shit up.

I was going to explain a problem.

I was going to explain, you know, this side versus that side, and here's where I come down on it.

And there were, you know, enough people who said, well, I don't see it that way, but I appreciate your time.

Well, that's great.

I can't quibble with that because

If anybody puts real thought, real fact-based thought into something and then we disagree, I'm not going to find fault with them.

It's the people who disagree with me who won't do their homework and who will believe garbage that has really poisoned the well in our, you know, our collective national conversation.

But if people just wanted to approach me and then disagree with something,

Hey, that's great.

Welcome to America.

I hear you saying trust like you can have your opinion and you should but that common thing right there is Trust and you have to build that over time

It definitely comes over time it comes through a whole lot of you know either newscasts or personal visits or newsletters or podcasts or whatever the case may be Which again just makes the case for you know that that personal brand I had

somebody approached me, you know, over the past few days, asking for a little bit of career advice.

And, you know, that was the advice that I gave was just to take the things that they were already doing, put a bit more of a personal touch on it, and, you know, go out and make it their own.

And if their current employer doesn't like it, well, then they can still take that skill set and go do something else with it.

I believe one time I gave this advice to somebody that said, no matter what your personal brand is, get the same exact handle on every platform.

And so far, Dr. Kristen Lierly is about the only person I know who followed that advice with a personal brand.

and is now under Dr. Kristen Lyrely on everything that's out there.

And frankly, I think she's put her name on platforms that haven't been invented yet

because she's

so consistent and ahead of her time.

So I'm glad I

imparted the advice on somebody.

to be fair, I would not be here if it wasn't for you because I was just a doctor in the world doing things and things started happening in women's health and somehow we got connected and you invited me to have a conversation and then you invited me back and pretty soon you couldn't get rid of me and here we are all these years later.

Well it was because again what what I saw there was somebody who is extremely personable with patients and you and I both know physicians who

Cannot connect with their patients.

They're very smart people, but they just can't make that connection And so when you get somebody like you who can make that connection and is smart and is a good listener That carries over into more things than the exam room or you know the surgical suite It carries over into all the other ding dong things that I have forced you to talk about

on the

radio for all these years and

If I hadn't, where would your love of Duran Duran go otherwise?

You have no other outlet for that, so you're

welcome.

Thank you.

A lot of this is social determinants of health, not necessarily the Duran Duran thing, but maybe because all of the joy and the clean water and the healthy food and the public schools and the ability to leave your home and go for a walk, all of those things contribute to your health.

So if you just think about your doctor's role being giving you a prescription or sending you to physical therapy, that's way too limiting.

We have to think more holistically when we're thinking

about our own health, our community health, and how we move forward out of this dark time together.

I

think that as much as we kind of romanticize the, you know, the Marcus Welby era of medicine, there was plenty of that before healthcare became as corporatized as it became, you know, with HMOs and then everything else that has come along since.

And it didn't have to be that way.

still plenty of room for a doctor to be real, to be able to explain things in plain English, to be a good listener, and to make you feel better, not just physically, but make you feel seen and heard.

And we need more of that.

So I'm glad not only that you have a show like this, but that you've taken on the leadership roles that you have in the healthcare field, because

you've talked to how many young residents, young med students, young doctors, and it's not to say that, you know, every one of them is gonna do things exactly like you do, but you provided at least some examples of ways that, you know, they can be well-rounded.

I have watched...

a wonderful number of my young reporters who were so green out of college, and they went on to become news directors in major markets, you know, after a time.

I didn't do that alone, of course, or with my wonderful co-anchor Judy Clark, or our news director John Hoffman, but with all their professors along the way and everything, but to have played a role in it.

And to see whether it's reporters, doctors, politicians, content creators, to see them take these lessons and help people communicate more on a person to person level rather than a mass production level is a pretty cool thing for both of us to have as feathers in our caps.

Very true.

And this brings me to my last question for you, which is for your flock.

whether they are people you have trained or mentored or the people who trust you and turn to you regularly for news and information because you give them not only the information but the hope that we can do something about these things.

What's next for you?

Where are people going to be able to find you?

I

don't know.

And that's the thing, people go, well, is this just a thing?

Is he gonna pop up somewhere else six months from now?

And I get that because that is what I did when I left the TV station and before running for legislature was I said, well, it's just time for me to do something else.

And then six months later, I announced I was running for legislature, but that was very much predetermined.

And again, I had just turned 40 or something like that.

Now in my early 60s,

it is very much a case of I'm here to retire for the sake of retiring.

I am you know ready as I said an election night to to step off the merry-go-round and travel more see the grandkids more take sherry to see more places over the years and then when it comes to you know news and politics and you know whatever you want to call it not

not entertainment but you know something.

I know the path I won't take even though I'm sorely tempted is the Johnny Carson route.

You know Johnny Carson said goodnight on that last show and save for one appearance on David Letterman.

Nobody ever saw him again until he passed away.

Nobody in the public I should say not his friends and things.

That won't be me but I also will not be

Racing into something and the cool thing is I don't have to we have now, you know There's no longer just the six o'clock news and the daily newspaper.

I've got a Substack account.

I could choose to make that active at any time I'm gonna post a lot less on Facebook than I have previously

but it's always there to fire up again.

So I don't know if it's something that's gonna motivate me like back in 2004 or if it's going to be, you know, upon the invitation of, you know, future media moguls, Kate Duffy and Dan Schaefer who, you know, create some kind of a content machine that constantly needs to be fed.

I'm going to try to do

a whole lot of nothing for a little while, simply because I've earned it.

And we've come off a wonderful election campaign with good results and the people who won can take it from here.

And then if at some point, I feel like the world just really is not shiny enough and needs my pearls of wisdom.

Well,

then I will share them.

But until then, as you know, there's a pontoon out on a lake with soda.

I don't get on nearly enough and I don't get my friends on that pontoon nearly enough.

So beaches for the next, you know, six plus months, pontoons after that.

And for everything else, I literally just have to say about all these media platforms out there, stay tuned.

beaches, pontoons, I'm betting more than a few supper clubs.

Supper clubs and and eventually eventually maybe, you know, this keyboard will get a little bit more use than it's about to get for the next little while.

I have a feeling, Pat Kretlow, you are far from done and I just want to express my undying gratitude to you for

what you have given me as a colleague but mostly your friendship.

I appreciate that so much and I appreciate the friends that you've introduced me to along the way as well.

We've made some amazing connections and we're watching some really cool people do some really awesome things and I'm glad that you've joined me in the media sphere here to try to elevate those people to give them some voices and like I said enjoy a few pontoon rides along the way as well.

That's right.

It's going to be hard for you to stay out, Pat.

Just saying.

It's noted, but first, some traveling.

Beach.

Got it.

Thank you for taking the time today.

My pleasure, my friend.

All right.

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