“Find what you love,” Charles Bukowski once said, “and let it kill you … For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.”
For CBS news anchor and ORPF alum Jennifer Keiper the saying should go: “Find what you love, and let it thrill you.” Former Oak Parker and CBS news anchor Jennifer Keiper found what she loved when she was a student at OPRF in the ‘80s, and throughout her decades-long career, it hasn’t killed the high-energy, daredevil reporter yet.
“I’ve been working 30 years,” Keiper said. “But never at the same place.”
She flashed a quick smile at her understated joke. Her eyes have the focused intensity of someone used to asking the questions and then listening carefully to the answers. The past few decades have been years of major transformations in broadcast journalism, powered by media consolidations, new technologies, and changing attitudes about how much news, if any, a radio station needs to deliver. Still Keiper perseveres. Even thrives.
“I consider myself very fortunate in that I’ve always done what I wanted to do,” she said. “And I’ve been able to do some things that I wanted to do on the side.”
Like teaching. Or casually taking a 2022 Rolls-Royce Black Badge Ghost for a spin.
Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Keiper moved with her family to Oak Park in 1982 after her father got a job at with the West Towns Bus Company, which had been acquired by RTA a year before and was located where the Pete’s Fresh Market is today.
Keiper attended Whittier for the last three months or so of the semester that year, then went on to Emerson Junior High School, now called Gwendolyn Brooks. She graduated from Oak Park-River Forest High School.
But it was at OPRF as freshman that Keiper got her start in journalism. She joined Newscene, the news broadcast students founded in 1982. It’s one of the longest continuously running student-run broadcast news shows.
Keiper said she and her fellow high school broadcast journalists would skip the cafeteria at lunch to hang out and hammer together the school’s weekly half-hour TV news show that ran on the local cable station.
“I was so happy, and I learned every aspect of broadcast news within the three years that I was in Newscene,” she said. “I learned everything from being in front of the camera to working a camera to directing. The person that oversaw the program was Don Lennie and he was a perfectionist. We did this program as though it was a professional program.”
After high school, Keiper went to college convinced she wanted to go into broadcast journalism, studying first at Northern Illinois University and then transferring to Columbia College when she discovered she could not do anything in her major until her junior year.
She landed an internship writing news at B96 radio the spring of her sophomore year at Columbia College. When that internship ended, the station offered a job.
“I took it and I continued going to school full time while being a morning news producer.” Keiper’s eyes softened slightly as she said this, and her smile relaxed. “I worked with Eddie and JoBo and it was a great time – and that’s how I got into radio.”
She has been working in broadcast journalism ever since, working for a series of stations — WBBM News Radio, WLS, Fox News Radio, among other stations — all of them in Chicago.
Today, she is the Midwest correspondent/world news roundup late edition anchor for CBS News Radio where she does nine broadcasts a night, five days a week, beginning work at 1:45 in the afternoon. Her first broadcast every night is at 6 p.m. Central Time – and is on air every 30 minutes at the top and bottom of every hour until 10 p.m. Central Time.
As a radio reporter, she has covered a wide spectrum of stories. She was at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin when President Ronald Reagan gave his famous “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” speech. She has covered trials, such as R. Kelly’s, reported on serial killers, such as Jeffery Dahmer, survived EF5 tornadoes, and reported on at least one royal wedding — William’s and Kate’s.
“I like telling stories,” Keiper said.
“When I say stories, though, I think people might automatically think fiction. I deal with fact. And I have to give both sides or all sides, whatever pertains to the story. So, I like to tell stories that are factual,” she said.
In her free time, Keiper loves to test drive cool or fast cars. “I usually attend two car rallies a year because I am a member of the Midwest Automotive Media Association,” she said.
Keiper used to host a weekly show, Drive Chicago, on WLS-AM. It still runs Saturdays from 8 to 9 a.m. but she doesn’t host it these days. Her shows, though, are available on Apple podcasts. “It’s not the Click and Clack under the hood,” she said, referring to NPR’s long-running show, Car Talk. “We talk about the business aspect of the auto industry.”
Also, Keiper test drove cars at Road America auto racing track, in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, to get a feel for the vehicles she was reporting on. Keiper left Drive Chicago when she left WLS in 2019 to work for WBBM. Her tenure at her current position at CBS News Radio began in 2020.
Keiper’s fascination with the cool, quick, dangerous rides remains. Recently, she test- drove the Mustang Dark Horse, which she praises for its “old school muscle car ride.”
And in the past year at the Road American track, she got all fast and furious with a 2023 BMW M2 Coupe, 2024 Dodge Hornet R/T, and a 2023 Dodge Challenger Last Call Black Ghost. Keiper added that the coolest car she has driven recently was a 2022 Rolls-Royce Black Badge Ghost. “It’s not every day you get to test drive a $400,000 car!” she said.
Find what you love, and let it thrill you. Certainly, that’s what keeps Keiper on the radio.
“I just like being in front of the mic and I like speaking to people normally. There are too many people that get up there with the Ted Baxter voice, you know, and it’s like, no, no, you know, just be normal. And I try to, always. I used to tell my students [at Columbia College, where she has taught off and on since the 90s], speak to me like you’re speaking to your friend, and then you’ll find your voice.”
By any account, Keiper has.
