When did Anderson Cooper go totally gray? My friends and I had the biggest crush on him in high school. I once wrote him a (joke, I swear it was a joke!) obsessive stalker fan letter. We would swoon over his twee flannel shirts and badmouth stupid Rawley Valverde, who would inevitably be sitting on his ass back at the “Hacienda” while Anderson dodged bullets in Bosnia. It’s disappointing to think that Lisa bloody Ling is probably the most famous Channel One alumnus. Anderson totally deserves to be a news-reporting megastar. Now if only he’d do something about that gray… (Link courtesy of Adrien.)

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  1. Wow, did that just take me back! My English teacher had a ridiculous crush on that other blond woman, whose name escapes me right now. He wrote some letter commenting on a story she did, and her response came in the form of a signed photo – which we promptly kidnapped and held hostage until he offered all the seniors milk and cookies after our runthrough. Aaaahhh, high school.

  2. I liked his work on The Mole although I only saw a few episodes. I think that catapulted him to higher heights on CNN because soon after he got a weekly show and now I think he’s on daily. I didn’t know about his being an actual journalist. He’s real likable.

  3. Was it Serena Altschul? I thought I remembered her doing Channel 1 before she moved to MTV…

    Yeah, Dan, he was just about the only serious journalist on Channel 1. He’d travel to all the war zones while everyone else sat on their ass and gave the sports report. That’s why we loved him. 🙂

  4. hah! channel one! wasn’t kathy kronenberger another reporter on it? my high school’s proudest moment may have been when bill clinton and ted kennedy came and it was brodcasted on channel one.

  5. Ah, Kathy Kronenberger… Someone even less memorable than Rawley. I wouldn’t have believed it. 🙂

    Your school was cooler than ours. Our big Channel One moment came when Rawley mentioned our girls’ basketball team’s undefeated streak and held up a little Lakeland mini-basketball.

  6. How have I missed Anderson Cooper all these years? I just discovered him a month ago. What does that say about me?

  7. Hee. It was standard practice that all of our high school projects would be videotaped spoofs featuring “Canderson Ooper” and “Serena Atchoo” reporting for Channel -1. I just remember AC reporting from Bosnia and saying things like, “Yeah, we’re recording from our hotel room because we’re not allowed to go outside. There was a mortar blast in the middle of the night, so we had to just hide under our mattress — this one, right here!” My brother would always spoof the camera-up-the-nose shot, “We’re not allowed to have cameras, but I’m shooting out the window of our moving car as we go through this military checkpoint. If they see my camera, I may be shot. . .” Those were the days. Heh.

  8. Adrien, I think it says that you went to a school with enough principles not to sell out its students to advertisers for some crappy free A/V equipment…

  9. Uh…I stumbled on this website looking for my old college roommate-Rawley Valverde. From your comments I guess you never thought highly of him?

  10. Oh, I guess he seemed nice enough, Kerry. I just didn’t think highly of Channel One in general. Their news team was so obviously engineered to be as photogenic and multi-ethnic as possible that they looked like the kids from “Captain Planet”. Anderson seemed to be the only serious journalist out of the bunch. I don’t think I ever saw Rawley leave the Hacienda. He just seemed less like a reporter and more like a vapid MTV veejay. (Of course, it’s possible that Rawley bitched to management every day asking to be sent to Bosnia and they wouldn’t let him. It’s possible.)

    The one completely nitpicky thing that really annoyed me about Rawley was his accent. He had this totally generic California newscaster accent… until he said his own name. Then suddenly he was all Hispanic with lots of rolling of r’s and trills. It made me giggle.

  11. Yep, that’s him. Although I doubt he ever asked to be sent to Bosnia. We had a hard enough time getting him to clean his room.

    Read the most recent thing he’s done was a Playboy movie with Kari Wuhrer….

  12. Wow, Rawley the pornstar? 🙂

  13. Naw-probably the pizza delivery guy or something…

  14. Kathy Kronenberger is a newscaster for Fox 8 News in Cleveland. I watch her every morning. She looks the same, except she has braces now.

  15. Rawley is reporting for the Fox news affiliate in Las Vegas now.

  16. hey wasn’t there a reporter named hicks neil or something like that on channel one?

  17. Kathy Kronenberger is no longer at Fox 8 in Cleveland. The official word is the Channel wanted to moved her and she opted to take time off to spend with her family. I think she is moderately hot and it seems tall as well. she was taller than all the male newscasters I ever saw her stand next to. I know that I don’t watch that morning show any longer!

  18. i remember these reporters too. The blond one was Tracy Smith. I also remember Krystal Greene. Their voices are still familiar in my head. Cooper in Bosnia, I totally remember that! The “no cameras or I’ll be shot” haha. Remember when he was out talking to kids and bombs started to fall? He ran under a bridge. I am not sure but Rawley Valverde covered the genocide in Rowanda. I also despised him and his greasy hair.

  19. Tracy Smith is now on CBS news, mainly on the Saturday Morning show, but is also a regular fill in on the Early News and the Early show as a contibutor.

  20. rawley was hot!!! i so had a cruch on him!!

  21. i will say that they always sent lisa ling to the asian countrys- and I specifically remember her falling into flood waters

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