TVSpy
Natasha Ryan, the 11 p.m. anchor for WDBJ in Southwest Virginia, has accepted a position as general assignment reporter for Seattle’s KING. She told The Roanoke Times that the KING offer came “as kind of a whirlwind” in which she found herself interviewing for the position just a day after KING management viewed her reel.
Ryan came to WDBJ in early 2006 and has anchored the CBS-affiliate’s 10 and 11 p.m. newscasts. She has quickly risen the local news ranks–jumping from WJAC in Altoona, PA to Roanoke in ’06 and now from from market 66 to 13. WDBJ news director Amy Morris says that she’s not surprised by Ryan’s move to Seattle. “One of her dreams has been to go to a bigger market,” she told The Roanoke Time. “This is a good situation for her.”
Throughout her career, Ryan has emphasized her passion for hard news. “There are two different types of journalists,” she said in a recent interview. “There are journalists who are about the face time and are in this field because they want to be on TV. And then there are the journalists that care about what they do and they want to make an impression not for how they look, but for the kind of stories they report and the job they do every day.”
Ryan’s last WDBJ broadcast will be January 7.