William Schechner

Cause of death was complications of a stroke, following a long illness.

Bill was known for his involvement in at least three innovative forms of broadcast news: he was a free-form radio host for Pacifica stations in New York and Berkeley, California; he was a member of the KQED Newsroom team that pioneered knowledgeable interchanges between reporters and anchors; and, with Linda Ellerbee, he anchored NBC News Overnight, lauded in its brief history as “possibly the best written and most intelligent news program ever,” according to the duPont Columbia Awards jury.

Born in Newark, N.J, to Sheridan Schechner, a banker, and Selma Sophia Schwarz Schechner, artist and homemaker, Bill was the youngest of four brothers. He attended Columbia High School in South Orange, NJ, and graduated from Oberlin College in 1963. He took a master’s degree in American History at Columbia University in 1965 but decided not to pursue an academic career. Instead he worked as a reporter for the Bergen Record, then drove a taxi in new York City, until one of his Oberlin classmates hired him as a reporter for the WBAI Pacifica Radio public affairs station in 1968.

At this time, WBAI excelled in covering the ferment of the times, reporting on the Vietnam War, anti-war organization and the counter-culture. The American Prospect co-founder and -editor Robert Kuttner said Bill “brought that sensibility of being curious about the people he covered and asking wonderful questions to all his reporting.” Kuttner remembers Bill’s “playful irreverence [which] saved BAI as a lefty station from being grimly politically correct and tedious.”

Beyond reporting, Bill wanted to host a free-form radio program like the beloved hours-long personality-centered shows on WBAI at that time, hosted by Larry Josephson, Bob Fass and Steve Post. The Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley, KPFA, offered him the morning slot, and he moved his cats and himself to the Bay Area in 1970. Two years later he was asked to join KQED Newsroom at the public television station in San Francisco.

Newsroom grew out of a Bay Area newspaper strike in the spring of 1968, which left the public without a reliable source of in-depth news. Reporter Mel Wax had the novel idea of gathering expert beat reporters and putting them on tv every night to tell the news, and then discuss and argue about it. The show outlasted the newspaper strike, and became an important source for coverage of local politics, anti-war and civil rights activism, and major national stories like the Patty Hearst kidnapping. Newsroom’s influence can be seen today on local news jocular banter and on the cable news shows’ mixture of news, banter and guests.

In 1976, Bill’s former newsroom boss, Joe Russin, had moved to KPIX, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco. Russin offered Bill a segment called “Schechner’s Journal,” a regular feature about whatever he wanted. “Schechner’s Journal” won an Emmy for a story about white water rafting in which two men dared the rapids, one blind and the other a paraplegic. The blind man rowed, and the paraplegic told him which way to pull. Another story featured his one-year-old daughter next to a spinning turkey carcass to illustrate arcane facts about Thanksgiving leftovers.

Such features led to an offer from NBC National News, which sent Bill to Atlanta for a year, and then in 1982 pulled him up to New York to co-anchor NBC News Overnight, an award-winning hour-long broadcast that aired at 1:30 AM. When most tv stations went dark between 1 and 3, Overnight offered a smart, witty digest of the days’s news. But not enough people were watching, and the show was canceled in late 1983. Heartbroken listeners tried to save Overnight with an early version of GoFundMe, sent in donations, to no avail.

After Overnight, Bill worked as a reporter and anchor for NBC News for several years, developing and hosting a news program for young people. In 1992, he and his family and cats returned to the Bay Area, and he went back to KPIX as an anchor and reporter. Bill was the recipient of two Emmy Awards, a Dupont/Columbia University Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and a Charitas award.

In retirement, he moved to Montclair, N.J. to be near his daughter Lilah Nicolaidis and son Joseph Schechner. They remember their father as a warm, affectionate man with a fine sense of humor, who devoted hours to teaching them to play chess, observe nature, serve others, and be kind. Raised in the Jewish faith, Bill was a member of several synagogues. It was important to him to pass his heritage to his children and his two granddaughters, and he enlivened every Jewish holiday with hand-drawn cartoon booklets illustrating aspects of the history of the Hebrew people.

Bill’s marriage to Danice Bordett ended in divorce in 2008. He leaves, besides his beloved children and grandchildren, his brothers, Arthur and Richard Schechner and their wives Cynthia Hollander and Carol Martin, his sister-in-law Norma Schechner, and a host of grieving relatives and friends on both coasts.

A funeral service for William will be held Thursday, March 23, 2023 at 11:00 AM at Bernheim-Apter-Kreitzman Suburban Funeral Chapel, 68 Old Short Hills Road, Livingston, NJ 07039. Following the funeral service will be a burial at Oheb Shalom Cemetery, Broad St, Hillside, New Jersey.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.bernheimapterkreitzman.com for the Schechner family.