Robert Reese
Brian Mackey talks with Jennifer Roscoe about 34 years as a reporter and anchor at WCIA-TV, Channel 3 in the Champaign-Decatur-Springfield market.
Illustration by Illinois Public Media (newscast photos: WCIA-TV / filmstrip: Adobe Stock)

Jennifer Roscoe on 34 years in local TV news

Jennifer Roscoe spent 34 years at WCIA-TV — all of them at the same central Illinois station — before signing off last month. She joins The 21st Show to talk about her career, which started with a 1992 internship at WCIA and included an unlikely brush with celebrity: sharing shrimp with '90s heartthrob Fabio in a mall green room.

Roscoe also reflects on the losses of two colleagues, meteorologist Robert Reese and anchor Dave Benton, who both died of cancer, and on how the industry itself has changed — from typewriters and pagers to satellite trucks, and from a public that trusted local news to one now more skeptical of the press. A tornado that struck central Illinois just days before her retirement convinced her that local TV news isn't going anywhere: she says only a station with people on the ground can tell viewers, in real time, which way a storm is headed.

Now retired, Roscoe says she's looking forward to spending more time with her daughter Sophia, who has special needs.

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