Losing a local news anchor is a lot like losing a friend

We choose how we get our news, and over the past 20 years, our decisions have been increasingly based on our political partisanship. We’re Fox watchers or MSNBC fans; we want Hannity or Maddow. Searching less for information than for affirmation of our own biases, we select our teams and root for their most valuable players. We feast on the carcasses they bring us, these media lions, and satiate our sectarian appetites.

Local news is different. We feel a deeper and more personal connection to the broadcasters who come from our neighborhoods and speak to us directly. We feel as if we know them as real people. This is partly because we have chances to actually meet them at events we attend — they’re part of community celebrations, stars at fundraising events and speakers at small-town functions — but mostly because we let them into our homes every morning or evening before the big-shots from national stations enter, arriving with fanfare and expensive advertisers, from glittering cities where most of us can’t afford hotel rooms.

To lose one of those familiar personalities can be devastating. On Dec. 7, viewers in Connecticut suffered authentic emotional upheaval when Denise D’Ascenzo, an anchor at WFSB whom we’d relied on for local news for more than 30 years, died suddenly and unexpectedly.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that our community is in mourning. When I arrived home after giving a talk to a group of medical professionals on Saturday night, I expected the rest of the evening to offer nothing more than a glass of wine and the ritual watching of Saturday Night Live. Instead, my social media pages were filled with messages from friends who understood. Denise and I, two lively Italian women who’d often appeared on the same dais, were often seen laughing together and serving our communities as best we could.

I have a photo of the last time Denise and I attended an event: we’re onstage with Barney the purple dinosaur. What I remember best, though, was dancing with her and her co-anchor Dennis House backstage as an R&B band played “Nowhere to Run.” Moments later, we walked out into the spotlight. The audience, seeing Denise’s perfect demeanor, probably couldn’t have guessed the enthusiasm she’d just displayed on the impromptu dance floor.

Or maybe they could, because Denise was irrepressibly warm, joyful and accessible as well as being consistently graceful, elegant and professional. She made you feel as you could give her a hug. As Debbie Doff-Hoffman put it, “I think I curtsied when I met her because I was such a fangirl.” Denise was unflappable, no matter what the circumstances. Ava Biffer tells a story about the time Denise visited her school district for a day devoted to literacy. “Watching her with more than a hundred kids, you knew she was empathetic, funny, charming, and kind. Her body language welcomed every one of those children. When someone can instantly create a relationship with a huge room full of middle school kids, leaving behind an enthusiastic, adoring fan club, that tells you everything you need to know about that person.” Doug Evans, who was CEO of the largest performing arts center in our area, remembers that “No matter how busy she was, you were the only person in the room” when Denise was talking to you.”

That’s how she made us feel when she delivered the news. Broadcasting nightly news that touched on the world’s biggest events, Denise also crafted stories about life‘s most incidental moments. Hope, as well as anxiety, should be part of our everyday schedule. Her own stories were inevitably brilliant and moving. It’s not surprising that, in her 33 years on the air, she earned many awards, including multiple Emmys.

Yet what mattered most to her viewers was that we each believed she was speaking directly to us when she explained the news of the day. She respected us. She helped us not only learn what happened but helped us understand why it mattered. We can’t take in life-changing information without someone to help us hear it. Denise’s image and voice, calm, courageous, and straightforward, made us trust her because she respected her viewers. She gave us a chance to trust and respect ourselves.

All news is local, and I wish all newscasters, local and national, could be more like Denise D’Ascenzo.