"KITV4 News This Morning" will get a new co-anchor, Kenny Choi, to sit alongside Mahealani Richardson starting Sept. 7.

Choi’s resume includes mostly sports anchoring at media outlets including WPIX and Sportsnet in New York City.

He is a graduate of UCLA, and while not from Hawaii, he looks like he might be.

Choi will succeed Dan Meisenzahl, whose future had been the subject of an online "save his job" campaign on Facebook for a couple years.

The online furor has proved largely unfounded, however, as he will move into an expanded, though less visible, role as executive producer and reporter.

Meisenzahl "has proven himself to be a valuable team player," said KITV President and General Manager Mike Rosenberg in a statement.

"We are excited to have him as a part of our management team."

Meisenzahl joined the station in 1997.

MANKE MOVING ON

If the late Bob Sevey was viewed as the head of KGMB-TV news in its long reign into the 1980s, Jim Manke was its backbone.

The veteran news and public affairs man will anchor his last "All Things Considered" at Hawaii Public Radio tomorrow after nearly 40 years in media, whether working in radio or TV or as the public affairs contact for a government official or entity.

Manke, 69, was KGMB’s assignment editor and, later, news director but also was an anchor and news director at KITV in the late 1960s and hosted classical music shows and anchored news on KAIM and the old KHVH all-news radio, respectively.

"I’ve never really characterized what I’ve done as a career. I’ve been really fortunate to have one interesting job after another," he said. He has worked in government public affairs in Saipan; was press secretary to the late Patsy Mink in Washington, D.C.; was a staff member for Gov. John Waihee; and worked in public affairs at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.

Asked whether he considers himself a mentor, he demurred, "You get that designation just by the fact of being old."

As news folk have learned of his impending departure, however, several have thanked him for giving them their start. There’s no room for a full list, but their ranks include Kelli Abe Trifonovitch, Robert Kekaula and Jade Moon. That last, formerly a producer-turned-reporter-turned-anchor, said Manke "was definitely a door-opener for me."

"What he did, what I’m most grateful to him for is, whenever I did well, he made it a point to tell me—he gave me the best possible start in news," Moon said.

Manke and his wife Joan, head of the neighborhood commission office, will use their Oregon condo as a home base from whence to "move along and just go holoholo … do something totally different," he said.