It’s 2 p.m. in Wichita, Kansas, and Ana Valdez Saravia (’24) is just starting her workday. As a multimedia journalist and digital anchor for KWCH, a CBS affiliate, she shoots, interviews, and edits all of her stories by herself. But what makes her days unique is what happens after the 10 p.m. newscast wraps: she begins producing the station’s Spanish news program — a show she helped launch in 2025.
“I’m the only person who produces the entire Spanish newscast,” Ana says. “I shoot video, edit, write the rundown, anchor the show, and publish it to our website.”
It’s a long day, but for Ana, it’s also the culmination of a journey that started thousands of miles away. Growing up in La Paz, Bolivia, she was immersed in news from an early age. Her father would turn on the radio every morning, carefully moving the dial to find the news station. After dinner, her parents would turn on the TV news.
“I believe one of the reasons my parents valued being informed was because they both grew up during violent dictatorships,” Ana reflects. “For them, access to accurate information was crucial, and that mindset never left them.” That early exposure, not just to local news but to international news, eventually inspired her to pursue journalism as a career.
But the path wasn’t straightforward. After receiving a scholarship to study in the United States, Ana discovered her university only offered journalism as a minor. She studied public relations instead and got started with the student newspaper, learning print journalism. She then moved into radio, where she helped launch a Spanish news program for the local radio station in Emporia, Kansas. Still, Ana knew she wanted more.
Her opportunity to fully embrace television news came at the Newmark J-School, where she became part of the first TV news cohort after the school launched its new specialization. “My professor, Vanessa Botelho, encouraged me to go above and beyond,” Ana says. “She gave my classmates and me an amazing exposure to the world of television news.”
While at her summer internship, Ana knew she had made the right choice. At NBC New York and Telemundo 47, she got to be in the studio, talk with anchors, and observe how reporters work in the field. “Experiencing all of that in a bilingual setting was a major turning point for me,” she says. “It confirmed that I truly wanted to work in video and television news.”
Perhaps the most defining moment of Ana’s time at Newmark came during her capstone project. Her reporting focused on elderly Latinos in New York City and their struggles with retirement. It meant analyzing immigration status information with limited databases and building trust with elderly communities. The result was a collection of stories spotlighting grandmothers and grandfathers doing their best to thrive despite countless obstacles — stories that earned recognition as a finalist in the 2025 National Association of Hispanic Journalists awards.
Now in Kansas, Ana is trying to expand the Spanish news program she helped launch and creating new partnerships within the community. She’s developing specific news segments that focus on what her community needs most: education, health, and immigration information.
She’s also learned to navigate the industry with patience and caution, especially when covering political stories in the field. “Sometimes a story doesn’t come together the way you hoped, or a key source doesn’t respond,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean the story is over, you can always revisit it later with a fresh angle or new approach. Persistence is a big part of good journalism.”