Fred Zehnder (Deceased)

A newspaper publisher and former Emmy-award-winning broadcaster, Fred was born in 1934 and raised in a farming community near Clear Lake in Northern California.

He attended Humboldt State University on the state’s North Coast, studying journalism and communications, while working as jack-of-all-trades at a small radio station in Eureka. Upon graduation in 1956, he was drafted into the Army and spent two years as a public information specialist at the guided missile battalion at Ft. Bliss, Texas, also working part-time as a newsman at KELP-AM-TV in El Paso. After his military duty, he began a 43-year career in television news, including stints at KPIX and KGO-TV in San Francisco, CBS-TV in Los Angeles, KOVR-TV in Sacramento and finally 23 years as news director of KTVU-TV in Oakland, retiring from broadcasting in 1999. In 1991, he established the weekly San Leandro Times newspaper in the San Francisco East Bay and in 2000 purchased the weekly Forum newspaper in neighboring Castro Valley.

He died June 27, 2021.