Fox News Channel’s Bill Hemmer is profiled by his hometown Cincinnati Enquirer.

“Fox is a special place,” Hemmer said one recent morning after wrapping up his newscast. “We have fewer people, and less staff challenges us to work smarter, faster than our competition. You hit the door in the morning and if you’re not going 110 mph, you’ll be left behind.”

Hemmer got his national break after he documented a year-long trip around the world while on sabbatical from a sports job at WCPO-TV.

“Somebody at CNN got wind of it,” says friend and former WCPO colleague Dennis Janson. Hemmer landed a job at CNN where he’d stay for 10 years.

Hemmer has settled into Fox, a network long criticized as being a mouthpiece for conservative causes and politicians. But Hemmer says he and co-anchor Megyn Kelly do not shape reports. “We size it up and shoot it down the middle,” he said, acknowledging that others in the evening line-up such as Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck “cover it with an angle.”