WTVT reporter Warren Elly is preparing to step away from the Tampa Bay Fox-affiliate after nearly 29 years with the station.
“I’ve always been a daily news reporter; all I’ve ever done is turn and burn,” Elly, 60, told the St. Petersburg Times recently. “I gotta get out of the grind. It’s time to slow down.”
Elly joined WTVT in 1982, after years with Youngstown’s WYTV, and quickly became known in the Tampa area for his hard-nosed reporting style, covering crime and politics (and occasionally both in the same story).
His final day with the station is set for July 5th.
Calling him the “last of the old-school TV reporters,” the St. Petersburg Times ran a moving tribute to Elly over the weekend…
Governors and state attorneys and sheriffs came and went, but there was always Warren from Channel 13, antsy with nervous energy and puffing down the last of a cigarette before his live shot. Prettier scorched-earthers have trampled through the local news landscape, promising and cajoling and moving on, but that was not him.
His stock-in-trade was trust and shoe leather, the result being a tendency to show up where something big had just happened or was about to.
Here’s a recent report from Elly: