I am the weekend morning producer and anchor at KAKE-TV, and I also fill-in for our weekday anchors frequently. In these clips, you’re seeing shows that I’ve produced and anchored. I love being able to put together shows. It was actually the reason why I wanted to get into television – to make great shows – but my first boss told me that I would make for a great reporter.
Why not both?
Here’s a look at my work.
Tornadoes sweep through Kansas communities
This block of news is entirely new for the morning. I don’t like to copy and paste material from prior shows. The footage is brand new, as the night before we had live coverage of the storms. I compiled work from our storm chasers and network footage available for the morning. We also had several viewers send in video and photos, which we featured on the show.
Extended anchor samples
Here are some snippets of my anchoring. I was compiling some of these clips for a competition, and I was struggling to pick what I liked the most. I like to have live chats with viewers when we need to do so. I am considered a bit of an All-Star with social media. As you’ll find, sometimes it gets emotional.
Interactive live news reports
Working on the morning show, I am often the first on many different crime and emergency scenes. We’ve had some big stories come through Kansas, and here are some of the different ways I’ve shared them.
Chatting about severe weather, missing people
One thing that I like to add on our weekend program is a moment to showcase the best of our team. Meteorologist Tony Laubach and I are the mainstays of the weekend show, but we both bring specialized work. He is a professional storm chaser, so when we have big weather weeks, I set up a time where Tony and I can gab about his and my investigative work. We should highlight what we’re doing and show viewers that we are truly there for them.
Cooking with KAKE!
My bosses probably don’t love this, but I love to put together food segments. It’s a smaller dream of mine to be able to have a great YouTube food blog, and this sort of catapults that dream a bit. I get my coworkers to join me in on the action and we have fun. Sometimes you just need to break up the content.
Vietnam Veterans reunite after 50 years
There are often times when we don’t have enough time to go do stories. There are many that I wish we had time for, so when I get a chance, I’ll show pictures, bring interview guests in and do other non-traditional storytelling to showcase it all. We should never limit ourselves to one format.
Capture KAKEland: Viewer photos
On every weekend show, I integrate viewer photos into them. I feel like the viewers are another cast member, and we should feature their work too. We have beautiful scenic shots, fun celebrations and more. When people share them with me, we often get good ideas for stories as well. It’s a segment that’s grown, since I started it in 2013, and it’s something I look forward to putting together every week. I edit the program at home. We feature, typically, three of them on our weekend program. Here’s a snippet of one.
Laugh-out-loud moments
I’m not your traditional news anchor. I can be a bit silly and serious. I’m not perfect. I just try to be as genuine as I can because, at the end of the day, I feel like that resonates with our viewers. People appreciate us being real. That’s why my weekend show has been so strong, and I cannot wait to see what the future holds.