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"Mornings were such a fun day part," said Kim Insley, the former KARE 11 "Sunrise" anchor who was dropped by the station in October after 24 years. "Not a lot of people around, so you can kind of do what you want. I had great freedom to go out and do stories I wanted to do. The hours — as crummy as they were for getting up in the middle of the night — just worked out so great for my family. I don't even know how you can be an evening anchor when you have kids who go to school, and then what? You see them at dinner and then you go back to work?"
Q: What time are you waking up now?
A: It depends on the day, but generally after 6, which is great.
Q: There was a time you were getting up at, what — ?
A: Ten to 2. In fact, this morning I got up, it was about 6 o'clock. I was grumbling because the alarm was going off and thought: What am I talking about? It's four hours later! IT WAS GREAT.
Q: Who's cried more since you left: KARE 11's Tim McNiff, your co-anchor, or Pete Lentine, your husband?
A: [Long laugh] I don't know, I think they were both shocked.
Q: I don't think McNiff would've come back to KARE 11 if he'd known you were leaving. I mean, they dusted off the "Kim & Tim" commercial!
A: I think it ran for about a week and stopped. That should have been my hint, right?
Q: You don't strike me as much of a crier.
A: I have not cried about this at all. I have no tears for this.
Q: Do you cry about anything?
A: I'm more one of the Hallmark criers. If it's a movie. NBC, at the end of their show now, they have an inspirational thing. Aw, that's just amazing [feigning tears]. I don't cry about me. Got nothing to cry about.
Q: Why didn't you get to say goodbye and be feted like Diana Pierce and Paul Magers?
A: I just didn't want that kind of an exit. Didn't want the hair retrospective. Also, to me it was befitting the way in which I was leaving. I just didn't want to be disingenuous.
Q: Hmmm, that would have been disingenuous. Would you care to elaborate?
A: [Playfully touching her chin] It's not a secret. This is not the time I was thinking I would be departing.
Q: It was not your idea?
A: It was not my idea, and so to me to have some big party thing wasn't exactly what was going on at the time. On the other hand, now that I'm not there, I'm not sorry about that. I'm completely looking ahead. It's something that down the road I was looking at anyway. You get to a certain point in your career, a certain age, you know that's not going to last forever and it's time to look for Act 2. … And you're very restricted in what you can do as a citizen if you are member of the media.
Q: Did you get in trouble for any of your tweeting?
A: No. I don't know if I pushed the line or not, do you?
Q: No.
A: You have to tweet within the news. I don't think I pushed the line. I think others pushed the line more than I may have.
Q: I've been hearing one thing they are talking about at KARE is a morning show that is mostly social media.
A: I think the company in general is very social media driven. They want to pull viewers into the process, so that wouldn't surprise me.
Q: Long before your current age you were considered one of the adults in the newsroom, which is not a negative comment.
A: Yeah. Some people get a lot more attention if they are not the adult in the room, having fun, swinging from the chandeliers. That's just never going to be me.
Q: What do you tell young people who are thinking about a career in television?
A: The career is in the storytelling and the reporting part. The medium in which you get that out there is always going to change. TV, what we know now, is likely going to change. That being said, I think there will always be local TV news.
C.J. can be reached at cj@startribune.com and seen on Fox 9's "Buzz." E-mailers, please state a subject; "Hello" does not count.
