The faces of recent Grand Canyon University graduates are appearing on local TV news far and wide – from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Yuma, Arizona, to Gulfport, Mississippi, and Fargo, North Dakota.
In a good way.
Just the last two graduating classes of the fledging broadcasting program have produced nine alumni who landed jobs as reporters, producers or anchors. And it’s not even a full bachelor’s program yet, only an emphasis in communications.
Sierra Naess, a spring 2024 GCU graduate, gets to work at 2:30 a.m. in the subzero mornings in Duluth, Minnesota, to anchor WDIO’s “Good Morning Northland.”
She can’t believe she gets to be the person that people wake up to every day. When she was a young girl getting ready for school in Anoka, Minnesota, she always watched Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan on ABC and wanted to be that cheery morning face of the news.
“That would brighten my day, so it’s really a full-circle moment because now ‘Live with Kelly and Mark’ is up next after my show, which is special to me,” said Naess, who started work in November. “I will wear my station jacket and people will stop me and say, ‘I watch you every morning.’”
GCU graduates say their success goes back to the tenacity of a group of students who called themselves “the breakfast club,” a diverse mix of communications students who rose early and stayed late in their determination to start their own campus news broadcast, “Lopes Lately,” in 2023.
Advisors and faculty who helped the GCU Future Broadcasters Club refine the bimonthly show, Michelle Fortin and Barry Buetel, were also key to landing jobs in a hyper competitive field.
“They helped me go above and beyond what we do in class, and that helped me get the job,” Naess said.
Fortin pushed Naess to do “day turns,” industry jargon for reporting, producing and airing a story in a single day. The day before Thanksgiving break, for example, Fortin pushed her to get more interviews for her story before students left, so she lugged a camera around campus, stressed and in hyper reporter mode. Now, those day turns are the standard in her job, which occasionally requires a reporting task.
“I love how strict she was without being overbearing. It showed she cared,” Naess said of Fortin, who is a veteran of TV news and leads the communications/broadcasting program at GCU. “That prepared me. You can’t go 20%. It just won’t air.”
Buetel, a longtime Valley sports TV veteran, voice of the Lopes basketball broadcasts and executive director of broadcast at GCU, told her to “be yourself in front of the camera. I think that is what landed me this job, bringing my personality into it.”
Naess said part of being the face of a city is experiencing it. So she’s joined “the weather girl who I do the show with” in a sauna followed by jumping into icy Lake Superior. “You just got to embrace it.”
She embraces her morning show, too, not only detailing tragedies like people falling through the ice on the lake but fun morning show staples, such as featuring adoptable pets, local bands and chefs to try a recipe on set.
Other “Lopes Lately” vets are also taking the leap, including Noah Losing, a weekend anchor in Fargo and Lexi Lambert, a reporter with CW7 in Phoenix, or Madi Hart, a morning show producer at KOLD in Tucson, and Andrea Turisk, who got a reporter job in December at KYMA in Yuma.
“I fell in love with the job, and it didn’t matter where I went,” said Turisk. “At the station, I work with people from Cronkite (Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Communications at Arizona State) or Penn State. I represent GCU, without a broadcast major yet.”
Fortin said the success of graduates goes back to students “seizing every opportunity to refine their skills despite limited formal coursework in broadcasting,” while putting in time at the GCU Broadcast Lab without pay or credit. “The tenacity they demonstrated on campus is exactly what the news industry values in its employees.”
Buetel added, “They didn’t hesitate to jump in and shoot additional packages and standups. There are no surprises that these students have secured positions based on the work they put in.”
Turisk loves the small market station where “people dog harder” for stories, she said, adding that she gets to do a bit of everything, filling in on the weather report one day or a weekend anchor spot, while her regular reporter duties leave her thrilled at journalism’s impact.
A recent story of high schoolers helping agricultural workers in the field by giving them care packages led to numerous messages from viewers on how much it impacted them.
“You really are making a difference out here,” Turisk said.
Recently, she followed a statistical trail – that there was large reduction in migrant border crossings in Yuma – to go to the border at 4:30 a.m. and find out herself. The photographer with her said there were crowds of migrants just months ago. They saw no one that morning.
“There is nothing like going live and seeing it for yourself and bringing that to light,” she said.
That’s what reporting is all about – and what she hears from her fellow broadcasting alums in a group chat.
“A lot of times people get caught up on being on TV, but if that’s the main focus for people, they are not going to last in the industry. This career is so much more than five seconds on TV,” she said. “GCU was really my introduction to what this career is.”
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at mike.kilen@gcu.edu
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Where some recent broadcasting alumni are working:
Fall 2025 graduates – Lexi Lambert, reporter, CW7 in Phoenix; Jalen Meyerpeter, journalist, SmartHER News.
Spring 2024 graduates – Madi Hart, morning show producer, KOLD in Tucson, Arizona; Bela Olague, reporter, KRQE in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Noah Losing, weekend anchor and reporter, WDAY in Fargo, North Dakota; Sierra Naess, morning anchor at WDIO in Duluth, Minnesota; Marco Bitonel, weekend anchor and reporter at WXXV in Gulfport, Mississippi; Andrea Turisk, reporter at KYMA in Yuma, Arizona; Parker Hovila, color commentary for Anchorage Wolverines, Anchorage, Alaska.
Internships – Greenlee Clark, FOX 10 in Phoenix.
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