Stan Chambers, Gentleman of the Press

KTLA newsman Stan Chambers retired in 2010 after 63 years. Here, he stands in front of an archive image of him covering the Long Beach Union Oil refinery fire in 1949. (Credit: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

by: Los Angeles Times

Posted: Feb 15, 2015 / 08:45 PM PST

Updated: Feb 15, 2015 / 08:46 PM PST

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

Whenever anyone used that fine old phrase “gentlemen of the press,” there was one man who came to my mind: Stan Chambers, who died Friday at the age of 91.

Stan Chambers is congratulated by colleague Jessica Holmes after he made his last broadcast in 2010 in a career that spanned more than six decades at KTLA. (Credit: Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times)

To call him the dean of Southern California TV reporters is to lowball what he was. He was, for one thing, the sweetest man ever to hold a microphone. When you swapped Stan stories with others in this trade, you learned that you weren’t the only wet, bedraggled competitor he gallantly invited into his news van to dry off while we were all covering a storm or flood.

He was a pioneer who started on TV the same year that the Black Dahlia was murdered, and didn’t retire until four and a half years ago. To the millions of Angelenos who watched him on KTLA every night, he was a friend and neighbor. He wore a shirt and tie even covering a fire because he believed when you’re invited into people’s houses, as he was, you should wipe your virtual feet and behave like a guest.

Chambers spent his entire career, more than 60 years, at the same TV station. He started off doing the kind of hokum that fell out of fashion for reporters but has now come back as TV journalists become “personalities” – ice skating and being the taster on a cooking show.

Click here to read the full story on LATimes.com.