Longtime journalist’s spirit lives as News 13 turns 20
Twenty years ago today, Central Florida News 13 debuted. It wasn’t pretty.
CFN could have stood for Children Finding News.
Of course, it isn’t where you start that matters.
The cable channel, later dubbed simply News 13, has become a dependable news source through the years. News 13 has connected with viewers thanks to a familiar format, seasoned professionals (in front of and behind the cameras) and young, hardworking journalists.
In thinking of News 13, longtime viewers may flash first to Scott Harris, the veteran anchor who helped launch the channel and gave it gravitas. When he died in 2011, his influence was celebrated.
“He changed the way everyone did their jobs,” Jennifer Cook, who worked with Harris 11 years at News 13, told me then. “He was the mentor to everyone at the station. Everyone called him the Senator. He was the elder statesman of the group.”
Journalists familiar to Central Florida viewers would land at News 13 and help raise the channel’s profile: Jackie Brockington, Danny Treanor, Marla Weech.
Meteorologist Treanor retired from News 13 in 2013, but he now works at CBS affiliate WKMGChannel 6.
News 13 didn’t renew the contracts of Brockington and Weech earlier this year, but longtime viewers know how crucial they were in helping establish the channel.
News 13 has been a training ground as journalists fanned out to other local stations. Shannon Butler and Nancy Alvarez are at ABC affiliate WFTV-Channel 9. Lisa Bell and Julie Broughton are at WKMG. Dave Cocchiarella is at WESHChannel 2, an NBC affiliate. Leslie Hudson fills in at Fox-owned WOFLChannel 35.
In the news business, owners change, journalists move on, storytelling evolves, and technology transforms everything.
Despite it all, the essential spirit of a place can still live on.
So viewers are lucky to still see anchor Ybeth Bruzual, who started at News 13 in 1998 and who carries on the Scott Harris tradition.
Harris “was such a tough, no-nonsense, oldschool journalist, so it’s funny to me that his spirit lives on in a feisty, beautiful Latina,” WFTV’s Alvarez told me this summer.
That the spirit lives is something to celebrate. Happy 20th, News 13.