March 1998 - March 2000

Reporter and anchor for WIOD, Miami's top commercial, English-speaking news station. I started as an afternoon reporter and evening anchor, later becoming a full-time street reporter covering Miami-Dade County. I would spend my entire shift running from one story to the next, giving live reports from sometimes rather volatile breaking events.

I had been reporting traffic for WIOD (and its predecessor WINZ, Newsradio 940) for six months while working at Metro Networks, so I was already a familiar name on the station and to the staff when I was hired in March 1998 to do news. I had been talking with then-News Director Michael Woulfe a couple of years by then, sending him updated resumes and demo tapes periodically when I was trying to get a job outside of Little Rock.

I started as an afternoon reporter, coming in at 2 pm, often running out to cover stories or I would chase news over the phone. Starting at 7 pm, I would anchor newscasts during WIOD's evening sports call-in show hosted by Kevin Courtney and later Phil Latzman.

Within a year I became a full-time street reporter for Miami-Dade County and would spend my entire shift, 11 am to 7 pm, driving from one story to the next, filing reports over a cell phone. There was rarely a slow moment. My editor Bob Sandler always seemed to find another story for me to race off to. Most times I would provide live reports, sometimes giving extended coverage from breaking events. I covered crimes, dozens of trials of all sorts, political campaigns, demonstrations, as well as the occasional lifestyle or entertainment related story. I also covered plenty of hurricanes, hunkered down in shelters with people who had evacuated their homes or packed alongside reporters at the National Hurricane Center. Reporting on the projected paths and power of the storms was a real learning experience. I also quickly learned a lot about the politics and issues important to South Florida's Cuban-American and Haitian-American communities. While I had been living here a couple of years by this time, being a full-time street reporter taught me a lot more about these people.

By far the biggest story I covered for WIOD was the first several months of the Elian Gonzalez saga. I was working on Thanksgiving Day 1999 when the five-year-old Cuban boy arrived, along with two others, on a raft. They were the only survivors of a larger boat, which capsized, killing Elian's mother and several others. His Miami relatives were initially given custody of the boy, but Elian's father, who still lived in Cuba wanted him back, prompting an international custody fight. It was sad to see a little boy caught up in that, especially given that there was more politics involved than real concern for his well being. It proved to be one of the most fascinating and engaging stories I've ever covered. It also helped me land a position with CBS News, which I had been reguarly filing for.