Handberg spent twenty-nine years of his professional life working for WCCO-AM and WCCO-TV. During Handberg's tenure as News Director and Vice President and General Manager at WCCO-TV, the station expanded to five newscasts each weekday, created the largest investigative unit in local broadcast journalism, launched the award winning "The Moore Report" and instituted regular editorials. Under his guidance, WCCO-TV created the I-Team in 1980, which in its first ten years won twelve national awards including two Emmys, two Peabodys and two duPont/Columbia awards.

Handberg maintained a strong relations between WCCO-TV and the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism, supporting it financially, encouraging his staff to teach and lecture at the school, and building an extensive student intern program.
No station effort better symbolized Handberg's rigorous commitment to journalistic ethics than his support for "In the Public Interest", a series of innovative broadcasts in which WCCO-TV invited its severest critics to challenge and question the station's operation live in prime time.

In 1989, Handberg retired from WCCO-TV to return to his first passion, writing. After four years, he was enticed back into the newsroom to help launch a daily newscast for Twin City Public Television, which became a model for other public television stations across the country.

He returned to his writing and has published four mystery novels. He continues to live (and write) in the Twin Cities with his wife Carol, and their children and grandchildren living close by.