NEW ORLEANS — The GOAT. Quite simply, that is how you would describe Karen Swensen.
It’s an overused term that means Greatest of All Time, but in the case of Ms. Swensen, it seems to apply in just the right way whether you are talking about her as a journalist or a person.
Swensen started her broadcast career at WWL in the mid 90s as a desk assistant who read the overnight, one-minute hourly news updates that were only seen by those getting up for the graveyard shift or insomniacs and ended it by being one of, if not the most respected broadcast journalist in the market.
Swensen quickly flourished in the journalism profession and moved up the ranks at warp speed – becoming a reporter and then an anchor in fairly quick order. With a gift for words and the work ethic of Tom Brady, Karen Swensen was never satisfied to just sit back and read the news. She wanted to be part of it, wanted to personally tell the story of many of the city’s well known and unknown characters.
As little as six months ago she gave an absolute clinic in reporting during Hurricane Ida. Trapped in New York by what was the happy occasion of moving her daughter in to a college dorm and unencumbered by the anchor desk, Swensen worked the phones and her contacts to get the latest information as things happened all around the metro area. Her hourly updates were ‘must see TV’ as she updated people on the plight of those evacuated from a senior housing complex in Metairie that had suffered severe damage and she told the story of people in Laplace as their homes were inundated with water. She also gave updates on power outages and flooding.
It wasn’t Swensen’s first rodeo with a devastating hurricane.
A true professional journalist, Swensen had to put aside the fact that her young daughter was evacuated far away and her husband was helping keep people safe in a rancid Superdome that reeked from human waste, a lack of ventilation and human desperation to cover Hurricane Katrina. Unable to communicate effectively with those most important to her, she nevertheless dove into the horror story of a lifetime - telling it - as always - with compassion and empathy.
She and a few dozen WWL journalists who stayed at the Hyatt next door to the Superdome told the story of despair and devastation and Swensen’s gift for writing and talking about both the tragedy and the triumph of the human spirit was never more on display.
Always optimistic and looking for the best, Karen Swensen is a person of deep faith and she has never shied away from that fact.
She credits local journalistic legend Hoda Kotb with befriending her when Kotb was already a megastar in the Crescent City and Swensen was, by her own admission, a “nobody.”
Swensen followed Kotb’s path of befriending and mentoring young people just starting out. She treated every crew member as the important cog in the news wheel machine that they were.
Swensen is so good and so unassuming that she doesn’t realize how many of her peers are often in awe of her. She’s won enough awards that she could ride in a parade and toss them as souvenir throws to the public.
Karen could have fun too, costuming and reveling every Mardi Gras, once dressing as Elvis and being totally unrecognizable and there was another outing as Austin Powers.
“I’d never been to a city that partied around the clock, around the year,” she said. “I was in heaven.”
Karen Swensen is so much a part of New Orleans that you would swear she was born and raised here.
Swensen followed so capably in the footsteps of both Kotb and the legendary Angela Hill – two other “locals” born elsewhere who became such a part of the city that natives claim them as their own.
Just two weeks ago someone came to do some heating system work at my home. He asked me where I worked and when I said WWL, he immediately wanted to ask about Karen Swensen’s departure that he heard about just the day before on the news. He said that his family and everyone he knows watches Karen and sees her as a person who really cares.
People always want to know if the on-air folks are the same behind the scenes that they seem on the air. Karen is and always has been. She doesn’t know another way to be. You can see it in her presentation. She hurts when the city hurts, cheers when they cheer.
What’s always been amazing to me about Karen is how she affects people who have been around her a relatively short period of time. Without trying to, without any plan, she makes them feel as if they’ve known her their entire lifetime. They feel comfortable around her. They respect her and her work.
At what was likely the roughest time of her life, the funeral of her beloved husband John, the church was packed to honor and support two wonderful people. I was talking to former Swensen co-anchor and former news director Mike Hoss and he said, “every living Channel 4 news director is here.” And they were – some competitors now, some from out of town, all with the idea that they had to be there. I mentioned that sentiment to another news director in attendance, Bill Siegel, a relative short-timer at WWL of 3, maybe 4 years. His reply was simply “And what does that tell you about the type of person she is?”
It told me, what I already knew. Karen Swensen is the GOAT.
