After working from home during the pandemic, WRAL anchor is leaving the news business
Kathryn Brown has been in the news business for more than 20 years — the last six of those as an anchor for WRAL.
Now, after working from home for nearly seven months during the coronavirus pandemic, Brown has decided that it’s time for a change.
Brown, who co-anchors the newscasts at 4 and 5:30 p.m. on WRAL and at 10 p.m. on Fox 50, is not just leaving her job at WRAL, she’s leaving the news business.
The decision to leave news wasn’t made lightly, she said. She has wanted to be a journalist since she was in the 9th grade.
“This is all I ever wanted to do when I was growing up,” Brown told The News & Observer.
But the pull to spend more time with her family is too strong. She and her husband, who works in public relations, have a nine-year-old son and twin five-year-old daughters.
‘A real reckoning with myself’
Having more time with her family while working from home over the last seven months “deepened some feelings” that she already had, Brown said, and she had to make a tough call about her future.
“Before COVID, I didn’t really know what I was missing, and once I realized what I was missing, I realized I couldn’t go back to not having that,” she said.
“I had a real reckoning with myself that, I can’t wake up in the morning, put my kids on the bus, kiss them goodbye on Monday, and then see them on Saturday. And the schedule that I work, that’s what it would amount to.”
Brown said that her bosses at WRAL have always been accommodating of her schedule, letting her dash out for soccer games and school functions, but she doesn’t like putting her coworkers in the position of “picking up the slack” for her.
“Everyone works so hard already,” Brown said. “The job is hard and demanding and getting more demanding by the day. If I can’t be 150% all in, then I need to find another option.”
And as far as working a different time slot, Brown said she has worked them all during her career, and the reality is, “there’s just not a great time slot to be able to do what I want to be able to do with my kids. There’s no time slot that’s going to allow me to get the amount of sleep that I want to get and be there for my kids for dinner.”
Brown joined WRAL in 2014 as a reporter and weekend anchor, and took over the anchor duties of Lynda Loveland when Loveland left WRAL in December 2017. Loveland also left the news business, taking a public relations job that allowed her more time with her children.
Before WRAL, Brown worked at WCBS in New York.
Brown calls her decision to leave WRAL “really, really bittersweet,” because she loves her job, loves the station, and loves the people she works with.
And the station has been understanding and supportive of her decision to step away, she said. She is grateful for that.
“Of all the things I’ve done and all the places I’ve been, the past six years and change has been by far the best,” she said. “As far as TV stations go, WRAL is the best in the country. ... If it’s not working here, it’s just not gonna work right now.”
Her last day at WRAL is Nov. 27.
As for what’s next, Brown isn’t going the stay-at-home-mom route (“that’s way too hard,” she said), but said she is exploring some options that will let her use some of her current skills and learn new things, but also give her “a little better balance and tuck my kids in at night.”
And she hints that she might be back on WRAL now and then for fill-in work.
Brown said the family has no plans to leave the area.
“Raleigh is our home,” she said.
A new anchor schedule at WRAL
After Brown’s departure, Lena Tillett will anchor the 4 and 5:30 p.m. weekday newscast on WRAL and the 10 p.m. weekday newscast on Fox 50, according to Joel Davis, vice president and general manager of WRAL and Fox 50.
Mikaya Thurmond will take over Lena’s former job of anchoring WRAL News on Fox 50 on weekday mornings. Mikaya is currently the weekend morning anchor.
The station says it will post Mikaya’s position and search for a replacement.
This story was originally published October 20, 2020 at 5:45 PM with the headline "After working from home during the pandemic, WRAL anchor is leaving the news business."
