Sam Hall Kaplan signs off Fox

Weekend reporter Sam Hall Kaplan has left Fox 11 News after ten years. In an emailed column scheduled to run in the April 4 Downtown News, he says the routine of reporting weekend features and news stories became physically and emotionally taxing.

It wasn't the fanatical right harassing me for being a member of the liberal media elite that prompted me to recently say goodbye to FOX11 News.

Conversely, perversely, it also wasn't the hostile left insulting me for working for FOX, unable as they are to differentiate between the puerile reactionary talk shows on cable and the reportage of local station KTTV, where I had been a member of the weekend news team since 1994.

I frankly have been long inured to insults from ideologues, idiots, architects and others in a maverick career spanning nearly a half century in print and broadcast, with sporadic forays into the public and private sectors.

[snip]

More effecting my decision was one morning several months ago when about to deliver the snow report from Big Bear I was introduced on air by show host Steve Edwards as one of L.A.'s leading urban authorities, a kind reference to my writings and abiding passion for planning and design. And there I was a virtual snowman on the ski slopes being buffeted by a blizzard.

While defrosting in the news van on the long trip back to L.A. I decided it was a good time to start thinking about moving on and pursuing my avocation of urban design and development. Fox was agreeable and generous.

Kaplan (Fox bio) used to be the design critic at the L.A. Times and a Metro reporter for the New York Times. He always blamed the loss of his weekly KCRW commentary "City Observed" on his 2003 panning of Frank Gehry's Disney Hall and the desire of station GM Ruth Seymour to give the time slot to her daughter.