Patsy Loris became the executive in charge of Noticias Telemundo on Jan. 1 and now has her senior leadership team in place.
All of the leaders are women, a rarity in television news.
Loris (shown right) has named Gabriela Tristán senior vp of news. Tristán joins Noticias Telemundo from Univision, where she served as vp and director of news production. In that role, Tristán oversaw the daily production and broadcast of all the network’s newscasts. She was also part of the team that launched Univision’s Sunday show Al Punto with Jorge Ramos and developed the format for Edición Digital, the first national newscast to simultaneously air on broadcast television and stream on Facebook Live.
Now, as Telemundo’s svp of news, Tristán will oversee the editorial and production units of its news programs, including the flagship evening newscast Noticias Telemundo, the morning news show, hoyDía and the newsmagazine Al Rojo Vivo. She will also be responsible for special news programming, including primetime news specials, breaking news coverage and events.
Gabriela Tristan
Loris has promoted two Telemundo executives to senior leadership roles. Gemma Garcia becomes the senior vp of digital news. In this role, Garcia will be responsible for leading and growing Noticias Telemundo’s expanding digital news initiatives.
Garcia joined Telemundo in 2016 and has served as the ep of the network’s flagship evening newscast Noticias Telemundo, as well as the vp for network and digital news. Under her direction, Noticias Telemundo last year won an Emmy for outstanding newscast or news magazine in Spanish. Garcia joined Noticias Telemundo from Spanish television broadcaster TVE, where she held positions as chief correspondent in New York, Italy and the Vatican and Morocco and deputy head of TVE’s news department, among other roles.
Gemma Garcia
Finally, Vanessa Pombo is promoted to senior vp, business operations, news. Pombo will manage the news division’s operations and resource allocation, responsible for finance, human resources, legal and sales. Pombo will also oversee studio and field operations production needs. She previously was vp of production management and business ops and has helped develop new revenue opportunities across the news division.
Vanessa Pombo
“This is a critically important time for the Hispanic community with the country still in the grips of a pandemic and heading into what will be closely watched midterm elections,” Loris said in a statement. “I’m very excited we have assembled a top-notch team of experienced news leaders who will ensure Noticias Telemundo continues to keep Latinos informed with rigorously reported news and innovative storytelling across all platforms.”
Tristán, Garcia and Pombo will report to Loris, evp of news who was named head of Noticias Telemundo in November. She succeeded Luis Fernandez—who retired at the end of last year—and took over as the top executive on Jan. 1.
Prior to her promotion, Loris led a revamp of Noticias Telemundo’s morning show, hoyDia, and promoted Julio Vaquiero to the network’s main anchor role in September (Jose Diaz-Balart moved to MSNBC).