Nadia Crow, 27, joined Salt Lake City’s KTVX-Channel 4 as the first African-American news anchor in the history of the state of Utah, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. In a sense, this is good news that the barrier has been broken – however, it is troubling that these barriers still exist in 2013.
In the following excerpt, The Salt Lake Tribune reports:
A lot of little kids want to be a cowboy or a princess when they grow up. From the age of 6, Nadia Crow wanted to be a TV news anchorwoman.
“I’ve always wanted to do this,” said Crow, who’s living out her dreams at KTVX-Channel 4. “The only thing I’ve ever really wanted to be is a TV news anchor and reporter.”
Other kids watched cartoons; Crow watched “20/20” and “Oprah.”
“When we lived in Norfolk [Va.], there were black females in TV news who were good role models,” she said. “And then when we moved to Chicago, you only had a few, even though Chicago is such a big city and it’s so diverse.”
In Utah, Crow is the first African-American to land a regular news anchoring gig at a Salt Lake television station.
It’s rather remarkable that it took until the year 2013 for that to happen. And it’s one of the reasons Crow took the job in Utah despite offers from other stations. And despite the fact that KTVX is in the early stages of a major rebuilding process after a series of ownership changes, layoffs and staff turnover.
“I knew it would be a challenge coming here with the struggles they’ve had, but chaos creates opportunity,” she said. “So I looked at it more as a challenge. And knowing that I would be the first African-American anchor was also a challenge that I wanted to take on.”
