The station agent

When the Minneapolis bridge collapsed this summer, national news networks scrambled their reporters to cover the tragedy. Boston's WHDH-TV (Channel 7) dispatched reporter Dan Hausle to bring the story home. He was the only Boston reporter on the scene.

"We will go to where the story is," says Randi Goldklank, the new general manager and vice president at WHDH and sister station WLVI-TV (Channel 56). "The second that happened, I [thought], 'I am sending someone.' We cover the story. We bring it back locally."

Goldklank runs her station with an aggressive approach that one might find on a national network or cable news station. She sent Hausle to Minnesota to show that WHDH was there for the big story. She wanted Boston viewers to see the story from a local face.

At 39, she's the youngest and only female general manager in a TV news market that is crowded with men who are mostly over 50. She took the reins at WHDH in July after Mike Carson, 65, retired after 14 years of running the station.

A fast talker and power walker with an undiluted Long Island accent, Goldklank describes herself as "a tiny lady" who goes at "1,000 miles an hour." Former and current colleagues describe her as a go-getter, aggressive and hard-charging - skills she's using to run one of Boston's biggest news operations in the country's seventh largest TV market.

"She is extremely aggressive but in a positive and professional way," says Carson, now a consultant for WHDH. "She believes in working hard, but she also believes in having fun along the way."

Randy Price, WHDH's longtime news anchor, was struck by Goldklank's fresh perspective on TV news.

"She brings a lot of new ideas and a different kind of energy to an increasingly challenging marketplace," he says. "But she's also grounded in the basic concepts that we need to be responsive to the people we serve."

Goldklank's challenge is to keep one of Boston's top-rated stations - WHDH traditionally wins the 11 p.m. news slot - atop its ratings perch. Her immediate focus though is breathing some ratings magic into WLVI, which WHDH's owner, Sunbeam Television Corp., bought in December. Since then, WHDH has been broadcasting its "7News" at 10 p.m. on WLVI against WFXT-TV (Channel 25), which has consistently won the time slot. In the July ratings period, WLVI had 32,400 total viewers to WFXT's 137,700 at 10 p.m.

Goldklank believes that WLVI, a former WB affiliate, lost viewers when the WB and UPN merged and became the CW last year. To reinvigorate WLVI, Goldklank is launching an aggressive promotional campaign called "Shaking Up the Boston Market." She is using billboards, buses, and air time on WHDH's news programs to let people know that the 7News brand is available an hour earlier on WLVI. Goldklank also plans to promote the 10 p.m. newscast when WLVI begins airing reruns of the CBS hit comedy "Two and a Half Men."

"We want 7News to be everywhere," says Goldklank, sitting in a glass-encased conference room that overlooks WHDH's buzzing red-and-blue newsroom. "Wherever you go, we want viewers to know that we are the local station to look for news. Every day I come to work is a challenge - how to stay in the forefront and how to stay ahead and keep the product moving."

Goldklank starts moving at 5 a.m. during her work week. She watches WHDH's "Today New England" and then works out for an hour at the gym in her downtown apartment building.

"I want to be up and going and stay in shape," she says between leg presses at 7 a.m. on a recent Friday. Goldklank wears a Red Sox baseball cap and track suit.

Goldklank admits that her personal life has played a secondary role to her job. "Everything I talk about always relates back to WHDH," says Goldklank, who is single. "I am a career woman. I chose this business, and I chose this career, and I'm in love with what I am doing. That fulfills me as a person, but I am very close to my family and friends."

It was through her family that she discovered her passion for news. "Growing up, we watched news virtually every night after dinner, together as a family," says Goldklank, who was reared in Long Island with her parents, her twin brother (she's older by five minutes), and their older brother. "With all the severe weather, we'd always find out about local school closings, and breaking news that would potentially effect us in our daily lives. Watching television news was part of our family routine."

She wanted to be a sports anchor but didn't like the idea of traveling and being away from her family. So at 22 she began working as a research analyst at Katz Television Group. During her 10 years there in sales management, she worked with the company's various TV station affiliates. She realized then that she wanted to run a TV station one day.

"Television has such an impact on people and the information they get," Goldklank says. "It's a public service, but it's also exciting. I wanted to be a part of that."

At Katz, she began following trade articles about Sunbeam. In the 1990s Sunbeam began making news for its aggressive, graphics-driven style of news at Miami's WSVN-TV (Channel 7). In 1993, Sunbeam, owned by Ed Ansin, bought WHDH and imported that same brand of alliterative prose and zooming overhead camera angles to Boston.

Goldklank liked Sunbeam's fast-paced news brand and wanted to work there. In 2001, Ansin hired her as a national sales manager at WSVN. As Goldklank cultivated new advertisers for WSVN, Ansin moved her to WHDH to revitalize the station's sagging ad sales. She brought in new auto and hospital advertisers.

"Randi is a team-builder. She has a natural flair," says Ansin, who says he asked her to take over after Carson announced his retirement last year. "She was doing a great job relating to news and the promotions department. It became very clear, she was the person to succeed Mike."

For the past year, as Carson began to make his transition out of WHDH, Goldklank eased into her new role with her own initiatives. In April, she introduced "7 on Your Cell," which delivers an abbreviated daily newscast to a user's cellphone. (That same newscast is also on the station's website.) She launched the station's first "Free Health and Fitness Expo," which drew 70,000 people to the Hynes Convention Center over two days in June. (Goldklank is planning another one for 2008.)

She also hired one of WHDH's former longtime anchors, Kim Khazei, who left the station in 2001 to be at home with her three children. The hire was important because of the recent trend of high-profile female anchors leaving their jobs to raise their families.

"I want to think differently about what we do, bring different ideas," says Goldklank, who is in the process of bringing a high-definition newscast to WHDH.

As she catches her breath from her morning work-out, she thinks back to her first official day as a general manager.

"I took a deep breath and I said, 'I'm here!' I always wanted to run a TV station and now I run two," Goldklank says, before hitting the shower and making her five-minute walking commute to WHDH.

Johnny Diaz can be reached at jodiaz@globe.com.