Pioneering producer and documentarian Pioneering producer and documentarian Pioneering producer and documentarian

Throughout her 60-year career as an award-winning TV producer and documentary maker for local media, Jean Walkinshaw continually pushed the boundaries of civic discourse and culture. As producer of KING-TV’s weekly interview show “Face to Face,” Walkinshaw shook up TV in the 1960s when she highlighted minority issues by teaming up with host Roberta Byrd Barr, ’59, a civil-rights activist and Seattle educator. Together, they made shows that explored race, poverty, nursing home abuses, the unhoused and other critical social issues. Walkinshaw’s method, which she adopted early in her career, was to let people “tell their own stories in their own words.”

In 1970, Walkinshaw moved to KCTS 9, where she produced “Faces of the City” and made more than 40 documentaries focused largely on the culture of the Pacific Northwest. She is also credited with ushering in an era of high-definition programming at KCTS with her documentary “Rainier: The Mountain.”

Jean Walkinshaw in 2015

Born and raised in Tacoma, Walkinshaw studied liberal arts at Stanford before moving to Seattle, where she enrolled at the UW to earn a teaching credential. At the UW, she met peace activist Floyd Schmoe and traveled with him to Hiroshima in 1951 to volunteer with a work crew building housing for atomic-bomb survivors. Upon returning to Seattle, she met lawyer Walt Walkinshaw at a Quaker meeting. They married in 1952 and had three children.

Walkinshaw was invited by Stimson Bullitt, a family friend and broadcasting executive, to work for KING-TV at a time when the station was looking for a morning talk-show host. Intrigued by the power of television, she returned to the UW to study communication and production with Milo Ryan, who founded KCTS.

Walkinshaw was the first female producer inducted into the Northwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Silver Circle. She also won eight Northwest Regional Emmy Awards and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Award. The Jean Walkinshaw Collection, which spans documentaries and interviews that she produced from 1972 to 2008, is held at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.

Walkinshaw died April 13 at the age of 99.