Monique Mitchell, Stephanie Foster, Chantell Black and Letitia Skippings have been selected as the anchor team for the Florida A&M University (FAMU) TV 20 News at Five Show, which will air at 5 p.m. Monday-Thursday, starting September 21.
“This is a high-energy training ground for our future broadcast professionals,” said Kenneth Jones, associate professor and coordinator for the broadcast sequence at FAMU’s School of Journalism and Graphic Communication. “We’re also delighted that Leonard Horton, an award-winning broadcaster who has worked at WCTV Eyewitness News and the Florida News Channel, has joined us as a visiting instructor.”
Horton, who won first place in the 2007 Florida Associated Press Awards for his three-part series on how residents of Bay St. Louis, Miss., recovered after Hurricane Katrina, has a master’s degree in journalism from FAMU. He will supervise the live newscast, teach Advanced TV News and Broadcast Newswriting and Reporting.
All four anchors are senior broadcast journalism students at FAMU. Mitchell and Foster will be the news anchors. Mitchell is from Miami, and worked as an intern during the summer at CNN in Atlanta. Foster, who was named an Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar in Diverse Issues in Higher Education last spring, is from Columbus, Ohio. Black, from Brooklyn, N.Y., and has worked as an intern with CNN in New York City, will serve as the weather anchor. Skippings, who is from Sanford, Fla., and president of FAMU Association of Black Journalists chapter, will serve as the sports anchor.
Producers selected for the show are Georgia Dawkins, a senior student from Sebring, Fla., Marquaila Bradley, a senior student from St. Petersburg, Fla., DeNishia Yearby, a senior student from Skokie, Ill., Jamesha Moore, a senior student from Jacksonville, Fla., and Dexter Johnson, a senior student from Newport News, Va.
FAMU-TV 20 is an educational access channel that reaches more than 80,000 households in Leon, Gadsden and Wakulla counties via Comcast Cable.