Robert Price

Robert Price joined 17 News in February 2020 after three decades in print journalism, and he seems to have taken to his career change well. Since coming to KGET, Robert has won three Pacific Southwest Emmy awards and two Edward R. Murrow Awards, including one for his groundbreaking 2021 five-part series on the illicit opioid fentanyl. Fentanyl: The Counterfeit Killer aired before the issue was widely discussed or well understood.

Price’s signature work is his occasional series of profiles of uniquely Kern County people and institutions called Where We Live. He has also written and reported a number of intriguing historical stories and mini-documentaries, including an award-winning half hour specials on the 1952 Earthquake and a comprehensive and entertaining look at 1960s-era fallout shelters that remain in residents’ yards and basements, often in plain view.

Before coming to KGET, Robert worked for the Bakersfield Californian daily newspaper, where he served in more than a dozen roles, among them Metro Columnist, Executive Editor, Opinion Editor, city and county government reporter, entertainment/lifestyles editor, sports reporter, radio host and webcast host. His popular newspaper column was published three times per week, 1999-2008 and 2016-2020.

Robert is the author of The Bakersfield Sound: How a Generation of Displaced Okies Revolutionized American Music (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2018), which received a 2019 ARSC award. He is also the author of Images of America: Bakersfield (Mount Pleasant, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2023). Robert’s newspaper work has been honored by the University of Oregon, Kansas University, Fresno State University, CSU Bakersfield, the Associated Press, and the California Newspaper Publishers Association.

Robert grew up in a military family; his father was a Naval officer, chaplain and, in civilian life, minister and schoolteacher. He spent his teens and early 20s in the Northern California counties of Marin and Sonoma, graduated from Petaluma High School and obtained his BA from Sacramento State University, where, among other activities, he served as editor-in-chief of the award-winning State Hornet. He remains stalled in the History master’s program at CSUB.

He has participated in numerous community events since coming to Kern County, including CSUB’s 2013-14 commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the publication of John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, which was set largely in Kern County; and in several public forums in conjunction with Zocalo Public Square, CalMatters and others. He has also participated in Stories on the Sidewalk, a project of the Arts Council of Kern, for which he has scripted and portrayed actual historical figures..

Robert is a former advisory board member of CSUB’s Kegley Institute of Ethics; CSUB’s School of Arts and Humanities; CSUB’s Public History Institute; the Kern County Superintendent of Schools’ Camp KEEP; the Kern County Nut Festival, for which he was a founding conspirator; and the City of Bakersfield’s Keep Bakersfield Beautiful advisory board. He created the anti-litter slogan “Litter: It’s Beneath Us,” winner of Keep America Beautiful’s 2012 national award for local campaigns. Robert has also taught classes for CSUB’s OSHER Lifelong Learning and Bakersfield College’s Levan Institute programs, and he coached in the American Youth Soccer Organization for 13 seasons, winning a Southern California championship in 2005. Robert has two children: Jill, a teacher, actor and director; and Ben, a freelance writer.