CHRISTINE KRIHA KASTNER
Writer
RESUME
With a Bachelor of Arts (with Honors) from Cleveland State University and an Associate Degree in Applied Business from Lakeland Community College leading to a varied career, it seems that my most profound claim to fame comes from the reporting I did as a newspaper stringer!
As a suburban correspondent/stringer for The Plain Dealer, the Sun Newspapers and The News-Herald I covered City Council meetings and Board of Education meetings (often late into the night). I would provide the beat reporters with story tips from my communities and accepted special assignments and wrote a few freelance pieces—with a byline! And then the newspapers started to run details of local crime.
Police Blotters—where the action is! I was “in the know” when it came to suburban crime. I often got calls from friends and neighbors about something that took place around the corner from them in the middle of the night. (Nothing! I knew nothing!) And without my notes it was hard to keep track of what happened where, and each day led to another 24 hours of incidents. Anyone can get a copy of an incident report because it’s public record, but the dispatcher doesn’t want to see a lineup of nosy neighbors at the window!
On a weekly basis, my “cop-stops” took me from Lyndhurst to Cleveland Heights to Shaker Heights to South Euclid to Gates Mills and more—ten suburbs in all! A lot of the log entries were mundane, but I tried to see the humor and ended up with some wild tales. I would come home and rant about how stupid people were!
Before my exciting newspaper work, I worked as Director of Public Relations for The Arthritis Foundation, Northeastern Ohio Chapter, in Beachwood, Ohio. Working with committees to promote special events and fundraisers, I shot photos at the “Tennis With Love” Tournament and got to help raise $$$ for the National Arthritis Foundation Telethon.
Before that stint I was the Editor in the Community & Public Affairs Department of Kaiser-Permanente in downtown Cleveland. I was responsible for the primary writing, editing and production of two external publications with a combined circulation of 170,000.
And before that, I worked for TRW Inc., Lyndhurst, Ohio as a communications specialist at TRW’s Valve Division. There I wrote and edited The Forum, a two-color internal newspaper, as well as several monthly corporate newsletters.
All my jobs involved writing of some kind, leading me to my books of anecdotal humorous memoir!
Accomplishments:
Contributing freelance author to Case Western Reserve University’s Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, 1987 Indiana University Press.
Biographee, 1987-88, 1989 Editions of Who’s Who in U.S. Writers, Editors & Poets, 1994-1995 Edition of Who’s Who in the Midwest.
Recipient, 1987 Award of Excellence from Women in Communications, Inc. for Kaiser Permanente’s Planning for Health.
Recipient, 1987 Bronze Quill Award from International Association of Business Communicators for Kaiser Permanente’s Profile.