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When it comes to television journalism, Rusty Surette has done it all. He started out behind the scenes as a photographer, videographer, and video editor, and then stepped out in front of the camera to become a news reporter and anchor. He’s run the whole show as an executive producer and takes to social media to keep his loyal followers informed. It’s hard to know how many, but it’s safe to say that Rusty has brought the news to millions, in media markets both large and small, over the past 25 years. He took time out from his non-stop schedule to share what motivates him to bring you the local news — every day.
IN: Let’s start at the beginning. What initially inspired you?
RS: Growing up, my grandfather was the smartest person in the world, hands down, like he knew everything. We were like a lot of families at that time, where you ate dinner at 5:30 p.m. and watched the evening news at 6 p.m. He would say this is how you learn. I'm very appreciative that he did it. I was in middle school at that time. He was always very good about explaining why certain things were happening in the world in a way that I understood it, and it was always in front of a TV with the news on. There was just that connection, like, okay, so to be smart like my grandfather, I've got to keep watching this.
That's the value of television news. That's the value of journalism is you're the one providing the context and the details and the information for people to learn what's going on in their world.
IN: How did you cut your teeth in this business?
RS: My passion is photography! I love shooting videos and photos. In my freshman year, I went to the teacher, and I said, “Hey, I know I can't sign up for the classes until my junior year, but I want to learn this now.” I wanted to learn it as quick as I could! I went to our journalism department. I said, “Let me go take pictures of the sporting events that are less glamorous, that didn't get all the attention. I'll go do it! So they let me dabble. They had just started a video yearbook and needed people on staff who could run a video camera, who could do editing on videos and splice it all up, put some music to it. And I was like, yes, please, let me do it. This is what I want to do.
IN: Did you ever want to do something else?
RS: There was a good period of time where I wanted to go into either law enforcement or be a firefighter, some sort of profession where I could help people. I think I was 13 or 14 when I got my first police scanner. I was a nerd!
One of these TV stations that I lived nearby growing up had started this program called The Neighborhood Network. I would hear things on the police scanner, and I'd hop on my bike, and I'd go to wherever in the neighborhood and shoot video in real time. … a lot of fires, car crashes and stuff like that in Port Arthur. And they’d pay me $30, $35 for each one. That was like my part-time job. The TV station got smart. When I turned 16, they offered me a job part-time as a tape editor. I’d get out of high school, go to the TV station, and I would cut video clips for the 10 p.m. show. That was my entrance into TV news. When I graduated from high school, they offered me a full-time job as an assignment editor.
IN: But you didn’t stay there.
RS: About a year after that, I got offered a job in Tyler, Texas, as a full-time photographer for another TV station. After two years in Tyler, I went to Raleigh, North Carolina, and worked for a station there. I worked in Las Vegas for the Fox affiliate for about a year.
IN: When did you become a news anchor?
RS: I had a friend call me from Lake Charles, Louisiana, which is near my hometown. “We're starting up a Fox affiliate. And it's only going to be about 10 people in that whole newsroom. If you come down and help run this, help show people how to use the cameras and everything else, I'll help you get on air.” So that's where the transition to being on air came from.
IN: What was it like to be an anchor for the first time?
RS: I had no idea what I was doing! Thank God, YouTube was not a thing at this point so people can’t see! I think I was 23, 24. I was put on the anchor desk on September 10, 2001. The next day was September 11. We resided in an area full of refineries and where the strategic petroleum reserve is, so there was a big national security scare concern after all that started happening. We were a bunch of kids getting our feet wet in journalism. We grew up quickly that day.
IN: Next you went to Oklahoma?
RS: I was in Oklahoma City for seven years, first starting off as a reporter and fill-in anchor. I reached a burnout point in my early 30s. I got out of TV for two years. I learned that the Red Cross chapter in Oklahoma City had a regional director of communications position open to handle media, PR, and marketing. I took that job, got onto the national disaster response team and was sent to cover the Bastrop wildfire, a couple of hurricanes, tornadoes in Mississippi. It was the most rewarding thing. I was helping an organization that helps people. It was an honor.
I loved doing that, but after taking a couple of years off, I missed doing TV. I wanted to go back into a manager role. I only got to where I was because of people who taught me, people who took time to mentor me, so I wanted to do the same for others.
IN: So you went back to the same station in Oklahoma City.
RS: They had an executive producer position. In that role, I was able to supervise a team of producers. To take somebody into our industry and get them to where they want to be, reaching their goals and their dreams — that was just amazing.
IN: How’d you get back to Texas?
After seven years in Oklahoma, I wanted to come back to Texas to be closer to family. I had an agent at the time. She said there's an opening at a place called KBTX — go check it out.
IN: And the rest is history!
RS: Honestly I fell in love with it. KBTX is a station that is part of the community. The company — Gray Television out of Atlanta — is great. They invest in us. They trust what we do. They know that we're running a good ship here, and we're doing what is right for the community.
IN: When do you work?
RS: I’m Sunday through Thursday. I love doing the Sunday newscast because that is the time that people are settling down, getting ready for the week, getting ready for school the next day. That's an opportunity to go, okay, here's everything you missed over the weekend. There's everything that's happened in the last couple of days. And here's what you need to know about the week coming up and getting prepared.
Friday and Saturdays are my off days, but I am often out attending events or chasing breaking news because it's big enough that I want to be there, or working on other stories that I may not necessarily have the time to work on during the week. I don't ever really feel like I get a full day off. I don't know what it's like, not to work. I'd rather do this than anything else.
IN: How has reporting changed since you started?
RS: Nowadays, when anchors or reporters go out to shoot a story, it's just us, one person who's writing, interviewing, cutting the video, putting stories online. We're long past the glory days of news anchors, walking into a newsroom, sitting around reading scripts, and then you just go read a teleprompter. I'm out there shooting my own stories with my own camera. I go back to my computer, I'm cutting my own sound bites, I'm choosing what I want to be the main photo on the webpage, what the video is going to air on the newscast, and I'm writing my own stories and my own scripts.
There's a lot of planning that goes into it. We've got six newscasts a day, Monday through Friday. We’ve got newscasts on the weekends, so there's a lot of air time to fill. We’ve got a team of reporters and producers. We get together at 9:30 a.m. and go over the assignments of who's going to cover what, and then we meet again at 2 p.m. to see where we are at that point. You'd be amazed what all changes between 9 and 2. I love that though. I love waking up every day, and I think I know what my schedule is, and it could change in a heartbeat.
We’re thinking: What are we going to put on the newscast tonight? How are we going to present this? How do we reach people? I always go back to the simple question: Why are we here? What is our purpose? What is our goal? Our goal is to inform. That's it. To share the stories of what's happening in our community
We also cover a very large area. We're not just Bryan-College Station. We're also these 14, 15 other counties that are around us. We are responsible for a very large piece of Texas property, and we are the most watched TV station in all of the Brazos Valley. Our antenna, which is in Carlos, can be picked up a little bit towards Houston, up north, into East Texas and then out west and south. We have a lot of area to cover. We've got a lot of time to fill. We've got only so many resources to do it all. So we have to be strategic every day.
IN: It sounds like a challenge.
RS: Journalism's tough. We're in an industry that isn't necessarily always appreciated.
We get questioned and called things, and people think we've got an agenda, or we've been called biased. We're also dealing with keeping viewer retention at a time when everybody's on their cell phone and their laptops and streaming Netflix. How do you keep people coming back to the newscast every night? It's a combination of keeping viewers that trust you and keeping viewers that appreciate what you do and doing this all while you're working nonstop. But at the end of the day, I don't know that I want to do anything else.
IN: How has the industry changed?
RS: We can't keep thinking of it as just TV news, because people are beyond the television now. We're now a platform of information. We're a news content distributor.
Yes, we're a TV station, but we have to distribute and go where the people are. And there are so many people who are getting news on their phone, on Facebook or YouTube, or the internet or podcasts, or just news alerts on the app. The social media part of it — that’s almost like another full-time job. I wouldn't have the first clue how to work at a job that you could just turn your phone off and go home and not look at it until the next morning. I wouldn't know what to do.
I'm very thankful that I've got a partner who is very patient with me because I can be at home and I'll get news tips on Twitter and on Facebook. When something big is happening in our community, the first thing people go to is Facebook. Is it on Rusty's page? Or is it on the KBTX page? Is anybody reporting it yet? And so even on my days off, if something big is happening, now I feel like I have to report it. It’s another beast to handle, but it's a necessary beast because it's an easy way for people to reach out to people, to connect with me, to stay in touch, to learn about what's going on, and to see what we're working on at the TV station.
IN: We’ve talked about how you have worked in a lot of other places, but what makes the Brazos Valley special?
RS: There's so much going on here. There are countless stories to be told here. I've been here six years, and I'm still blown away by how many nonprofit groups are here, at how many people are out here doing things for their neighbors that don't want the praise that don't seek out the headlines. Those are the ones that I love to find, the people or the groups that they're doing it on their own in the shadows and aren't in the spotlight all the time. I love giving them that spotlight.
At the end of the day, this is a community that has each other’s backs. Bryan's got its own identity – it’s so much different from College Station, and College Station is so much different from A&M, and A&M is so much different from … — everybody's got their own unique identity here. It keeps it fun and interesting. I love how this community is growing and still keeps that hometown feel.
IN: Why would you recommend television journalism as a career choice?
RS: It's a job that allows you to be a voice for others, to give people the platform that they should have to share their stories. It's keeping people accountable who were in positions of authority, and it's being able to witness history in the making every day, be it at a city council meeting or covering the pandemic, or a murder trial, or helping to celebrate the latest business that's opening in your community.
I'm the eyes and the ears of what everybody else gets to see, and that’s such an extraordinary privilege to be able to do that. I've been doing this now more than two decades, I want to make sure that we've got our next generation of journalists who were there to keep doing what we're doing, to keep sharing these stories, to keep holding people accountable, and to keep making sure we celebrate the good that is here in our community.
IN: Thank you, Rusty.
In this month's Editor's Letter by our editor-in-chief, Ellen Ritscher Sackett, find out why Everybody Loves Rusty
