Courtesy Gonzaga Bulletin

(February 5, 2010) Despite an incredibly competitive job market for graduates trying to get into the news industry, Gonzaga alumnus and former baseball player Chris Bach continues to climb the ladder of the broadcasting world. He was recently hired by KREM as a weekend sports anchor. Even though he had job opportunities and was hired right out of college, his path wasn’t as easy as it might seem.

Bach came to Gonzaga on a baseball scholarship but admits that “you’re not going to find my name in any record books. Baseball didn’t work out here.”

After playing a year-and-a-half for the Bulldogs, Bach transferred to Edmonds Community College and later onto New Mexico State, where he played baseball for a semester.
“I missed the Northwest, I missed my buddies at Gonzaga,” he said of his time in the Southwest.

So Bach returned to Gonzaga, where he cruised to graduation focused on his major. But first he had to choose one, which wasn’t easy.

“I tried five different majors when I was in college,” he said. “I still graduated in four-and-a-half years.”

Bach tried his hand in business, sports management, communication and public relations. It was when he was taking classes for public relations that he took one of Dan Garrity’s broadcasting classes and finally found his academic passion.

“[Bach]’s a storyteller,” Garrity said. “He could tell a story in news, sports, he could do weather, he’s just a storyteller. He’s curious about the world around him, and he knows how to condense the story and display it in a way that people want to listen and want to learn.”’

Bach’s storytelling ability brought him a lot of opportunities after college, including an opportunity to work with KREM as a photographer and editor. However, he opted to go with an on-air opportunity in Bozeman, Mont. Bach learned how he could best assist a newsroom in Bozeman. Although Garrity believes that Bach could report on anything, Bach learned he wanted to stay with sports when he had to fill in for a news reporter.

“I had to pick up some slack for a news reporter who had just relocated, and I quickly realized that if I had to do news in this business I wouldn’t last very long,” Bach said.

“Sports are my passion. Nothing is wrong with [reporting the] news, I’m just not passionate about it. In this business you have to expect to work more than 40 hours a week, sometimes you’re at 50 to 60, and if you don’t absolutely love what you do, you’re going to be miserable. I love sports, so I can deal with those long work weeks.”

After working in Bozeman as primarily a sideline reporter for Montana State athletics, Bach took a job with the ABC affiliate in the Tri-Cities, Wash., as the sports director. Bach signed a two-year deal with the station in the Tri-Cities but his contract was cut short when the station’s parent company was forced to “terminate the entire sports department.” But two days after receiving his layoff, KREM offered him the job he has now, which he feels is a blessing.

“It’s cool for me to work in this market,” he said. “My main beat is my alma mater, and that’s not very common in this business. In broadcasting, in this economy, you need to go where the jobs are, so I’ve been very fortunate that I get to stay in the Northwest.”

Spokane is a medium-sized market, one that Garrity feels Bach was prepared for.

“It’s a huge step [for him to get the job at KREM] — it’s like an endorsement of him as a television professional — but in the scheme of things, [it means nothing]. He’s been ready for this market,” Garrity said.

Bach’s old teacher is more excited at the prospect of seeing his mentee’s work on a nightly basis.

Bach believes he isn’t done ascending to the top of the industry. He wants to eventually get a job closer to his hometown, Sammamish, Wash.

“My destination market would be Seattle,” he said. “If there are other opportunities that come up, I’ll take advantage of those. But, my whole family is in Seattle, and working in a top-15 market like that would be a very good place for me to settle down and have a family.”

Regardless of where Bach lands in the industry, Garrity knows that Bach will be successful, because of how he handled adversity while at Gonzaga.

“There’s one story that is very telling about Chris. Just minutes before one of our newscasts for GUTV that Chris was doing sports for, the teleprompter went out, all of the information from his script was lost, and he came into my office with concerns about doing the job without the support he planned on having. I said, ‘Hey you’re an athlete, the conditions aren’t ideal, you still have to perform.’

He accepted the challenge, nailed the newscast, and from that moment on I knew he was going to be exceptional in the professional world.”

blog comments powered by Disqus