Friday, Oct. 31, 2003 | 5:25 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION Nov. 1 - 2, 2003
Gwen Castaldi arrived in Las Vegas in 1974 and soon began working as a reporter for an AM radio news station.
But TV is where Las Vegans know her best.
During Castaldi's television tenure, she worked for every local station -- 3, 8, 13 -- as a reporter and anchor. Castaldi left the airwaves in 1998, quitting her job as an anchor for KVBC Channel 3 and relocating to KVVU Channel 5, where she served as the station's inaugural news director and helped launch its news division.
Tired of the hectic deadlines, Castaldi retired from TV two years later.
Beginning Monday the 51-year-old makes her return to the airwaves with "KNPR's State of Nevada." Castaldi serves as executive producer and host of the new public affairs interview program, which airs from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. weekdays on KNPR FM-88.9.
The Las Vegas Sun recently talked to Castaldi about the changes to the local media, her brief retirement and her fondness for the outdoors.
Sun: Other than growing with the community, how has the media changed since you first arrived?
GC: Well, I think they have evolved with the times. It's a much more technical and Internet-based media because we didn't have fax machines, cellphones or computers back in the '70s. And everything we did was by land line or by physically visiting a location and interviewing someone and then running to the pay phone to get your story in if you were doing newspaper reporting. And we used pay phones to call our TV stations and say, "OK, we're at a court and ... "
It was kind of primitive then. You've got to give it to the media. They've grown, they've gotten microwave and satellite trucks and I was fortunate to be able to watch that whole era of technology grow in Las Vegas. It's been quite a change. I mean, there's another TV station which has news on the air, Channel 5, that I got started. There are probably three, maybe four times the radio stations that were on the air when I first came to town. So the entire arena and landscape has changed. There are many, many more evolving issues, a lot of it spurred by growth. So there's a lot more to cover in many ways than there even was 30 years ago.
Sun: Why did you leave television news?
GC: I just had felt that my work had run its course in terms of day-to-day mainstream news. And there comes a time when we all outlive periods of our lives. We make changes because it is just time. And I wanted to leave that day-to-day commercial media. I did not want to read and report short-form news any more. I had done it, I was proud of what I had done and I tried to do my best with it. But I was ready, in my late 40s, to change my direction in life. I was looking at what's the next phase. I wanted to break, refresh and regear, which is what I did. I've had time to be at home and spend some time with my husband and my animals and work on the yard and do normal things.
Sun: With the "KNPR's State of Nevada," what are some issues you'll address?
GC: No Child Left Behind, Yucca Mountain, traffic problems, what's going on with the Ethics Task Force, the aftermath of the tax mess that came out of the Legislature. The gang issue. Homeland Security ... it's going to have those kinds of issues.
We'll put them out there to sort out, let people make their own decisions. I'm not going to take sides. KNPR cannot advocate one way or another. We are committed to not be anything but as neutral as we can be to try and get as many sides of the story as we can. And if we can't get it all in one show, we'll get the rest of it in another show.
And we are going to expect input. I'm sure we're going to get everything from critiques to compliments, and I hope that's the case. That's stirring spirited discussion and that's what we want.
Sun: Will listeners be able to contact the show?
GC: They will be able to e-mail us. There will be a point in time when we will have a call-in section at the end of the show. I mean, it's not going to be a totally call-in show, but there will be a section -- and I don't know how many minutes -- toward the end where people can call in and ask a couple of questions. They will be able to e-mail and we will do some kind of e-mail summary and we haven't decided on how periodic that will be, whether it will be weekly or monthly.
Sun: Longtime Las Vegans may feel they know you from your many years on television. But what's something most people don't know about you?
GC: Well, most people would not see me as someone who works the land, but my (aunt and uncle) were country Pennsylvania farmers. So, the first vehicle I learned to drive was a stick-shift tractor when I was probably 11 or 12. Although we lived in a suburb, we would always go to that farm four times a year. So I spent a lot of time on the farms and that was a big family connection.
My dad was a blue-collar factory worker and he did all his repairs at home. So I learned how to nail nails and how to do plumbing and how to wire lamps and how to go up on the roof and how to cut grass. I'm very much a do-it-yourselfer and that's something most people would not see me doing for some reason. I guess because they used to see me in a suit all prim and proper on television. I have this side of me that gets your hands dirty, goes out and gardens, plants a tree or puts up a fence. I really enjoy going out there and have a real love of the desert. I have a few chickens and a few ducks and I live in a rural area.
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