News anchor Jasmine Huda carries her Gladiator smoothie as she exits the studio after anchoring the 5 o'clock news April 2 at the Fox 2 studio in Maryland Heights.听
Photo by Laurie Skrivan, Post-Dispatch
Jasmine Huda consults with colleague Mike Colombo as she reviews scripts for a Sunday news show at the KTVI Fox 2 studio in Maryland Heights.
Photo by Laurie Skrivan, Post-Dispatch
Jasmine Huda reviews scripts for the 5 o'clock newscast April 2 at the Fox 2 studio in Maryland Heights.听
Photo by Laurie Skrivan, Post-Dispatch
Jasmine Huda attaches her microphone pack to her upper leg before anchoring the 5 o'clock newscast April 2 at the Fox 2 studio in Maryland Heights.听
Photo by Laurie Skrivan, Post-Dispatch
"On Friday nights when I have multiple newscasts, I always drink a (Smoothie King) Gladiator. It's vanilla with strawberries and bananas," says news anchor Jasmine Huda as he reviews scripts before the 5 o'clock newscast on April 2 at the Fox 2 studio in Maryland Heights.听
In high school, Jasmine Huda was not good at science. She needed to boost her physics grade when she was a junior, so she took on an extra-credit assignment.
She and a classmate at Ladue Horton Watkins High School went to Lambert airport to conduct experiments about velocity. They videotaped items on the moving sidewalk with a camcorder, and she recorded an introduction and a conclusion to the project.
A few days later, the teacher told her 鈥 in front of the class 鈥 鈥淛asmine, your presentation was great. You have an excellent future in communications. But your equations were wrong.鈥
The teacher, the late Jim Harpel, was prophetic: Huda is now an award-winning television journalist and anchors the 11 p.m. news at KTVI 鈥 Fox 2.
By her own admission, the path Huda鈥檚 professional career has taken has been both unconventional and a little bizarre.
The traditional route for news reporters is to learn their craft by starting out at a small station in a small market. Then they move on to progressively bigger stations in bigger cities. If they are ambitious enough and talented enough, they will end up in a city the size of St. 不良研究所导航网址 or larger. Only from there do a select few make it to a national network.
Not Huda. Though she wasn鈥檛 reporting, her career began on the national level 鈥 and for two of the most ideologically opposed institutions, National Public Radio and the Fox News Channel.
Huda grew up in Frontenac, the youngest of five children. Her parents, who had an arranged marriage, immigrated to the United States from small villages in India. Her father went to medical school there and became an ophthalmologist before the couple moved to St. 不良研究所导航网址.
Huda played sports as a child 鈥 鈥淚 wasn鈥檛 very good, but I had a lot of fun,鈥 she says 鈥 but found her calling in high school while on the speech and debate team. One of her favorite speech-and-debate events was radio news speaking, in which the students had to write and deliver a five-minute newscast.
鈥淚 was getting a feel for why the sentences are constructed the way they are, getting a feel for why they emphasize certain words. I really liked being able to zero in on the storytelling, even if it was just a 45-second story on what the president was doing,鈥 she says.
The research and the hard work paid off. Her junior year, she came in seventh in the state in radio news speaking. Her senior year, she was the state champion.
Even so, she was not necessarily set on making broadcast news her career. She went to the University of Michigan, which does not have a broadcast news department, and became a political science major.
She excelled her first two years, but as a junior she became listless and lost. Her heart wasn鈥檛 into her work; her grades slipped.
鈥淚t took some real soul-searching to recognize that I wasn鈥檛 allowing myself to be what I wanted to be. To pursue my real interests. Once I accepted what was happening, it all made sense, and things started to move in a great direction,鈥 she says.
That is when she went into the offices of the NPR affiliate in her college town, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and asked if they would consider giving her an internship. They agreed, and her life was changed.
鈥淚 got hands-on experience in my field, and at an NPR affiliate. It doesn鈥檛 get much better than that,鈥 she says.
Still, Huda did not have a job offer in hand when she graduated, though she had sent out numerous applications. She was literally in the process of moving out of her apartment when she got an email from National Public Radio headquarters in Washington, D.C., asking if she were interested in an internship at 鈥淎ll Things Considered.鈥 They wanted to interview her that day.
She got the job and found an English basement apartment to share with a roommate in the trendy neighborhood of Georgetown. She was ready to fly to Washington and had an informative phone conversation with the man who ran the show about what she needed to know about working there.
That was Sept. 10. The next day was Sept. 11, 2001.
鈥淢y flight kept getting delayed, because everything was shut down. I think I got there Sept. 17, and the next day I started,鈥 she says.
One of the best parts about working at NPR was getting to meet all of the people whose work she had long admired.
鈥淭he one I was most excited about was Robert Siegel. I had been listening and recording his newscasts for so long. I remember sweating profusely. He was very nice,鈥欌 she says.
After the internship ended, she had a temporary stint as an editorial assistant at 鈥淢orning Edition,鈥 but a permanent job at NPR was hard to find. She described her predicament to Juan Williams, who was working at both NPR and Fox News Channel at the time, and he asked if she would be interested in working in television. 鈥淚t was a culture shock, and not just (the change from) the medium of radio to TV. This was a 24-hour cable news network. It was very cutthroat. A lot of the things you hear about that place are true.
鈥淚 did not know what I was getting into. I really didn鈥檛. I knew it would be fast-paced, intense. It was just not what I expected, for someone who was in her early 20s,鈥 she says.
Huda worked on the booking desk at Fox, securing guest commentators and pundits to be panelists on the daytime news shows. She was there when Saddam Hussein was captured and when Ronald Reagan died, which happened during a G-8 summit in Savannah, Georgia. She was in Savannah trying to book people to come talk about Reagan.
鈥淚 learned a lot from my experience there. I鈥檝e learned a lot from every workplace. There it was how to juggle 800 things at once, when you鈥檙e putting together different segments, when you鈥檙e under deadline pressure,鈥 she says.
Years later, her supervisor at the time, Laurie Luhn, said that she had been sexually harassed by Fox News CEO Roger Ailes for 20 years, including the time that Huda worked there.
鈥淚 can鈥檛 believe that I was part of that environment,鈥 she says. 鈥淎 lot was happening that I didn鈥檛 know about.鈥
Huda came back to St. 不良研究所导航网址 and was soon hired by a station in Springfield, Missouri. There, she made the mistakes that beginning reporters make, and learned how to avoid them. She learned how to handle the pressure of deadlines and to manage her time, and she also picked up countless tips from veteran reporters and photographers, particularly at the Springfield News-Leader newspaper.
After two years, she headed back to St. 不良研究所导航网址 and worked for KSDK (Channel 5) and KMOV (Channel 4) before finding a home at KTVI in 2016.
They are glad to have her.
鈥淛asmine is fantastic to work with. She鈥檚 been a do-everything employee for us. Everything I put her on, she does great at. She鈥檚 just a very versatile anchor-reporter,鈥 says Kurt Krueger, the station鈥檚 vice president and general manager.
鈥淪he is tenacious in that she goes in-depth into a story. And her personality 鈥 people like her, so they open up to her. She is able to go beyond the standard reporter role and connect with everybody,鈥 he says.
It is the reporting part of her job that makes Huda stand out. Most anchors no longer work as reporters, but she actively seeks out her own stories to report.
鈥淵ou can tell the (anchors) that are reporters at heart. I think it comes across in your delivery and your knowledge of the stories,鈥 Huda says.
Some of the stories she now covers come from sources she made while reporting over the years.
In one recent story, she covered a beloved pediatric physician at SSM Cardinal Glennon Children鈥檚 Hospital, Nadeem Qureshi, who contracted COVID and was hospitalized for weeks. When he was finally released, people he worked with and the families whose lives he had touched threw him a surprise welcome-home parade.
鈥淚t was such a beautiful story to me. I watched the video of these people, and it made me cry. Seeing his reaction, and all these people. You know, it鈥檚 not the action, it鈥檚 the reaction. It was so sweet,鈥 she says.
The idea for the story came from the doctor鈥檚 former nurse, Peggy Snyder. Snyder is also the mother of St. 不良研究所导航网址 County Police Officer Blake Snyder, who was killed in the line of duty in 2016. Huda covered Blake Snyder鈥檚 death, and she and Peggy Snyder have kept in touch over the years.
KTVI news director Audrey Prywitch says: 鈥淔amilies reach out to Jasmine for a reason when a loved one is killed in the line of duty. Each one is unique, and she takes the time to honor the office; it鈥檚 not a cookie-cutter approach.
鈥淪he feels their loss deeply, and she is able to create fitting tributes. She is able to make each one fitting and unique.鈥
The job is stressful, and Huda spends much of her time away from the anchor desk working for an assortment of charities as a way of giving back to the community. Both of her parents have heart disease, so she spends most of her charitable time with the American Heart Association, especially the Go Red for Women program. She also works with the BackStoppers and other organizations, including the National Council of Jewish Women鈥檚 Back 2 School Store.
In order to lessen the stress, Huda turns to yoga almost every day. She first tried it at a bachelorette weekend, which was a difficult environment in which to fully appreciate the activity. But she was interested enough to try it at her gym, and now she is hooked.
鈥淎 lot of people think it鈥檚 just about stretching, but I take a lot of very intense classes, heated yoga or power yoga classes that leave you drenched. I get a physical workout, but I also get one for my brain. It clears the clutter in my brain. It sets the day off really well, and I recommend everyone try it,鈥 she says.
鈥淚t sounds cheesy, but I feel like it gives me physical and emotional strength at the same time.鈥
At the end of a class a few years ago, one of her yoga instructors shared a quote by Yung Pueblo that Huda says 鈥渞eally resonated with me.鈥 She even saved it on her phone鈥檚 home screen; she calls it 鈥渋nsightful, poetic and powerful.鈥
The quote is: 鈥淭rue power is living the realization that you are your own hero, healer and leader.鈥
St. 不良研究所导航网址 TV news stars: Where are they now?
St. 不良研究所导航网址 TV news stars: Where are they now?
Introduction
For decades, familiar faces delivered the news on television in St. 不良研究所导航网址.听
While some veterans remain on air, many have moved on听鈥 either to new markets, new opportunities or retirement.听
Frank Absher, executive director of the St. 不良研究所导航网址 Media History Foundation, said the influence of local television personalities has waned over the past several years as social media and cable news have risen. The relationship to viewers has evolved as fewer people watch, and there is greater turnover among on-air talent.听
"It's to a different degree mainly because many of the personalities in lower-paid jobs are using it as a stepping stone. In the past, this is where the person wanted to be, to put down their roots," he said.
But St. 不良研究所导航网址ans remain intrigued by TV news personalities with local roots. We caught up with a few of our past favorites and asked them to tell us what they are doing now (their answers have been edited for length and clarity). Many of these anchors are easily recognizable, while others had shorter TV careers and are forging new paths ahead.
Hearing their stories is like catching up with an old friend 鈥 albeit one we've only known through our screens.
Russ Mitchell
Karen Foss
Julius Hunter
Betsey Bruce
Mike Owens
Sharon Stevens
Deanne Lane
Jeff Small
Leisa Zigman
Brittany Noble
Watch now: Catching up with familiar faces from TV news in St. Louis
'It was a culture shock, and not just (the change from) the medium of radio to TV. This was a 24-hour cable news network. It was very cutthroat. A lot of the things you hear about that place are true.'
Jasmine Huda on her time working for the Fox News Channel
News anchor Jasmine Huda carries her Gladiator smoothie as she exits the studio after anchoring the 5 o'clock news April 2 at the Fox 2 studio in Maryland Heights.听
鈥淵ou can tell the (anchors) that are reporters at heart. I think it comes across in your delivery and your knowledge of the stories,鈥 says Jasmine Huda, a news anchor for KTVI Fox 2.
News anchors Vic Faust and Jasmine Huda apply last-minute makeup before co-anchoring the 5 p.m. newscast April 2 at the KTVI Fox 2 studio in Maryland Heights.
"Over the years, I have learned to how to apply my own makeup," said Jasmine Huda before recording a promo for the 5 o'clock newscast April 2 at the Fox 2 studio in Maryland Heights.听
"On Friday nights when I have multiple newscasts, I always drink a (Smoothie King) Gladiator. It's vanilla with strawberries and bananas," says news anchor Jasmine Huda as he reviews scripts before the 5 o'clock newscast on April 2 at the Fox 2 studio in Maryland Heights.听