FROM STORIED COVERAGE OF BAY AREA, STATE AND NATIONAL POLITICS TO SPEARHEADING A LANDMARK SUPREME COURT FIGHT FOR PRESS FREEDOM, THE REVERED JOURNALIST CAPS A STORIED 28-YEAR CAREER AT KQED
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Scott Shafer, one of the most recognizable and trusted journalists in Bay Area news and politics, announced his retirement from KQED today. A senior politics correspondent with the KQED Politics and Government desk and cohost of the weekly radio and podcast program Political Breakdown, Shafer has been a central presence of KQED’s award-winning newsroom and political coverage for three decades. The announcement was made on today’s new episode of The Speaker, a limited podcast series on the career of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi that Shafer hosts. He will retire in mid-December.
Throughout Shafer’s reporting career, his professionalism, journalistic rigor and extensive relationships within City Hall, Sacramento and Washington D.C. have made him a deeply respected, steady and empathetic companion for audiences during periods of political change and crisis.
“For nearly three decades, Scott Shafer has asked tough questions, held those in power to account, and told the story of California,” says Governor Gavin Newsom. “Scott represents the best of journalism — tough and thoughtful — and San Francisco, and the entire state, is better for his work.”
Shafer has extensively interviewed several of the most consequential local and state politicians of our times, including Newsom, Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Jerry Brown and Dianne Feinstein, among others. He has reported on local, state and national elections for both KQED and NPR, including the historical 2000 presidential election, Barack Obama’s nomination at the 2008 Democratic convention, and the 2016 and 2024 Republican and Democratic conventions.
“Working for KQED has given me a front row seat to historic events and people, and a chance to cover controversial and important issues,” says Shafer. “I am profoundly grateful to KQED for giving me the support, encouragement, resources and independence to follow those stories wherever they led. It has truly been an honor to work alongside so many talented colleagues with a commitment to truth and fairness while uncovering untold stories and helping to make sense of our complicated world.”
In 2004, he started on a reporting odyssey that may have been his most consequential assignment. It was then that he began covering the battle over same-sex marriage and the state amendment to abolish it, Proposition 8. After Prop 8 was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court (after a lengthy series of appeals), Shafer initiated a KQED lawsuit to have the trial tapes unsealed. The legal battle was joined by several other media organizations and led all the way back to the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted the tapes release – a major legal victory for the First Amendment and LGBTQ+ rights. After the tapes’ release in 2024, Shafer co-produced a pair of powerful and emotional videos with two couples who were plaintiffs in the federal trial to get their reactions as they watched the footage for the first time.
Shafer’s path to covering politics really began to take form first as a political insider. In 1986 he signed on as press secretary for the “No on 64” campaign that defeated a statewide ballot measure that would have quarantined people with AIDS. He then joined former San Francisco Assemblyman Art Agnos’ successful mayoral campaign in 1987. Then he served as Press Secretary for Agnos during a period that was defined by the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake. He would go on to work for then California State Controller Gray Davis on his 1992 U.S. Senate campaign and work in political consulting.
Shafer joined KQED in 1998 as a host for the first statewide radio program The California Report (TCR). At the time TCR aired only two days a week, but expanded to all weekdays and added the complimentary The California Report Magazine on weekends during his tenure with the program. Today TCR is carried on over 20 public media stations across California.
In 2018 Shafer partnered with KQED Politics and Government Correspondent Marisa Lagos on the launch of the weekly radio and podcast series Political Breakdown. Now in its ninth year, the award-winning program currently runs three times a week on podcast and features interviews with guests from across the political spectrum and in various capacities who provide more personal perspectives on the world of politics.
“Working with Scott has been one of the highlights of my career,” says Lagos. “People always comment on how much we seem to like one another, and it’s absolutely true. That chemistry — and fun — is what has made Political Breakdown a success. Scott is obviously an incredible journalist and sharp political mind, but he’s also a wonderful teammate and caring person. I feel so grateful to call him a friend and colleague.”
Shafer has also spearheaded and hosted a pair of limited-run podcast series that put a capstone on the careers of two of the most important modern figures in California politics. The Political Mind of Jerry Brown was launched in 2020 in collaboration with the Oral History Center at UC Berkeley Bancroft Library to document the former California governor’s reflections on his life and career as he was exiting public service. And just last month, KQED launched The Speaker, a five-part series that builds on Shafer’s exclusive access to Nancy Pelosi as she too reflects back on her historic life and career while she prepares to leave public office in January. The many hours of raw interviews with Brown and Pelosi that were the foundation for both series are in the Oral History Center’s permanent archive for scholars to study for generations.
Shafer has received awards for his reporting from PRNDI, Peninsula Press Association, Sacramento Press Club, RTDNA and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, among others. The Buffalo, NY native is a graduate of Cornell University, where he started his broadcasting career as a DJ at the campus radio station WVBR.
He lives with his husband John Kennedy, who is the City Attorney for Emeryville. Though he will continue to serve as an on-call reporter for KQED after retirement, he looks forward to spending more days floating in a pool in Palm Springs, playing pickleball, travelling and silencing notifications on his phone.