Lukens' career keeps taking pleasant downhill turns
By Erin Cox

Shannon Luthy Lukens

Shannon Luthy Lukens ('82) has anchored for CNN, local TV and a mountain sports show, directed marketing for an international pro cycling team and written one of the most widely distributed ski columns on the World Wide Web. Now she's applying all that experience to what she says is the most important phase of her career.

Parenthood.

"My main job now is as a mom. I have three little kids, ages 9, 8 and 3. The writing is something I do on the side," said Lukens, 42, who lives in Highlands Ranch. "It can be done early in the morning when they're still asleep or late at night when they're finally in bed. If you can write well, you can always get a job."

The job she refers to is writer and editor for the oldest and largest snow-sport Web site in the United States, www.onthesnow.com, which Lukens said receives as many as 30 million page visits a month during peak ski season. It provides daily ski conditions from every resort in the world.

"There are several regional editors and writers, of which I am one," she said. "This is my fifth year doing it. You can find it in the Snow News section. It's called 'My Rockies!' It is at www.aminews.com/news/rockies."

Her writing won several awards last year, including the Lowell Thomas Award from Colorado Ski Country USA and the Harold Hirsch Award from the North American Snow Journalists Association.

For most of the two decades since she graduated from CU with a degree in broadcast news, Lukens said she has been heavily involved with outdoor sports, in particular bicycling and skiing. Ironically, she said, that road first headed her away from Colorado's renowned recreational hotspots.

"On an old, rickety typewriter, I wrote letters to every news director in small markets across the country," Lukens said. "I sent out over 150 letters in hopes of a job. I was also an intern at Channel 9/KUSA at the time. The stations kept saying I had to have experience, which was hard to get for the first time. The Channel 9 internship was my only hope," Finally, she said, the news director at the ABC affiliate in Kearney, Neb., called and asked for a tape.

"My car was loaded, and I was on my way within a week. I didn't know how much I was getting paid or what I was doing. It turns out I was helping edit tapes for the different broadcasts."

A good start, but not exactly what Lukens wanted to do.

"I kept hounding him to get more work," she said. "Eventually, I started anchoring a weekend magazine show and doing reporting on my days off. I'd lug the camera, do the shooting, do the editing and do the report myself. I had to do everything. My salary wouldn't even buy my family groceries for a few weeks now. I brought home $265 every two weeks. It was pitiful, but I didn't care."

After almost a year there, she said she was offered a job in Aspen anchoring the news at KSPN, a TV and radio station.

"That was four years of fun and hard work with a tremendous learning experience," she said, until the TV station ceased broadcasting in 1987.

She said she did some free-lance work for KMGH-Channel 7 in Denver covering World Cup skiing and the Coors International Bicycle Classic, then was the voice of the Tour de Trump and handled marketing for the AC Pinarello pro cycling team.

"I took my skiing experience and started working for ski television shows ('American Skier' and 'Sports Express') that were in national syndication at the time. The company that produced them, IPI Sports, moved me to Atlanta, where they were based."

But IPI shut down in 1992. Again, Lukens' writing ability provided another opportunity. She said that after working briefly for a radio station in Atlanta, CNN hired her as a news writer. She started on the brain-jarring early morning shift, starting at 3:30 a.m. and eventually got to work overnight hours that started at 8 p.m.

"I was newly married and then pregnant, and this would let me sleep all morning once getting home," she said of the overnight shift.

On her first night back from maternity leave, Lukens said supervising producers at CNN, aware that she had anchoring experience, called.

"I thought they wanted to see baby pictures. Instead, they said the 10 p.m. anchor didn't show up to relieve Lynn Russell at 'CNN Headline News,' and I was on in 17 minutes. I didn't even know where the studios were in the building.

"I rushed to makeup and headed downstairs where they immediately threw me on the air. I called my husband in the middle of the night and told him to turn on the TV.

"The next day, the executive producer at 'CNN Headline News' called and said I could fill in any time."

That began a few years of anchoring for Headline News as well as for the CNN Airport Network. She said she also worked as a free-lancer for CNN, filling in when regular anchors were sick or on vacation.

In 1996, she and her husband decided to move their growing family back to Colorado.

"My skiing connections pulled through, and I started writing the ski column," she said.

Lukens said she recently heard from Sam Kuczun, retired J-School professor.

"He worked us fairly hard, but nothing could replace actual experience," she said. "However, on my last final, the writing came easy and the stories flowed into place. We had to do story rewrites within an hour. I aced the test and knew then that I had potential."

The little Lukenses – from oldest to youngest Meghan, Penn and Libby – are starting to show what they can do as well, Lukens said.

"As a ski writer, the resorts are always asking me to visit, to write about their area.

"As you can imagine, it's fun to get to go to all of the different resorts. My kids have turned into hot little skiers. This year, the baby finally gets to take lessons. Thank goodness. Eventually, we can all ski together," she said.

shannonLL@ earthlink.net