By Jason R. Latham / Photos by Louiie Victa / Location: Uncommons
Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy may have embodied the “local celebrity” moniker we bestow on our local television news people. Still, the business has grown far more challenging than in the “Panda Watch” days.
Television stations are doing more local news than ever, and though the industry has a reputation for being transient (that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?), there are many dedicated Vegas reporters highlighting the issues that go overlooked when we’re furiously swiping up.
Here are five talented local TV personalities who embody the best of Vegas journalism.
FOX5 Anchor
Las Vegans know there’s life beyond the Strip. Jaclyn Schultz wants to make sure people see it.
A fixture of KVVU-TV’s early and late evening newscasts since 2019, Schultz lives up to the “local” in her station’s “Local. Las Vegas.” branding on the air and off. She’s immersed in the community, looks for stories in every corner of the valley, and knows what topics resonate with Las Vegans who aren’t always interested in what’s happening at the center of town.
“I tell [incoming journalists] that if you get to know the community, you’ll see there is so much happening in neighborhoods and edges of town that is often under-covered and underreported,” she says.
A Southern California native, Schultz was a Vegas visitor before she became a local—“My husband’s family moved here before it became cool,” she jokes—and fine-tuned her journalism skills in Sacramento, Atlanta and other markets before she arrived at KVVU.
Though she’s not native, Schultz is local. She knows that Las Vegas is a “big, small town” of 2.2 million and that there’s “one degree of separation” between us.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a celebrity, your neighbor, your hairdresser, everyone knows someone you know,” she says. “That’s the case even though it’s constantly growing. Las Vegas is booming and will look completely different in the next two years.
“Every time there’s new growth or development, essentially, that’s another news story.”
And where does she go to feel like a local?
“I love art galleries. I love live music. I love going to Aces games,” Schultz says. “I love a good estate sale and thrift shop.
“Why else are we here? It’s a good life, it’s easy, and everything is at our fingertips.”
Now that Schultz, her husband Marquis, and their two “naughty” Pomeranians have settled into town, she’s learned (like many of us) that there’s no longer a need to leave town to see family.
“Californians will travel,” she laughs. “By the way, that’s another piece of advice I’d give anyone who lives here and is getting married in Vegas. Be careful how many people you invite to your wedding because everyone will come.”
News 3 Anchor
Full disclosure: I’ve known KSNV-TV anchor Dana Wagner as a friend, colleague and mentor for 23 years. So, as I connect with the veteran journalist before he and his family board a plane for a weekend getaway, I know there are a few questions that my memory can’t quickly answer.
But there’s one thing that’s been scratching at me all these years, and I ask: Why is it so g-damn easy for you to talk to people?
“I guess I was just born that way,” Wagner laughs. “Interacting with people comes naturally to me, and a lot of times, I’m just hoping to make somebody laugh and put a little joy in their life.”
That’s Wagner in a nutshell. Always positive. Always helpful. And, importantly, always listening. For years, I’ve sat beside him at restaurants, shows and get togethers, waiting for my turn to continue talking about whatever I was talking about as he, like a seasoned politician, happily shakes hands and chats up viewers walking by. People feel comfortable around Wagner, something that’s easily attributed to his longevity in the Vegas television market.
“I don’t look at myself as a news anchor, necessarily, I look at myself as a Las Vegan,” he says. “I drive the same roads. I eat at the same restaurants. I pay the same taxes. My daughter went to public school.
“Talking to friends and neighbors is a cool experience because they see me as their fellow Las Vegan, Dana Wagner.”
A California native, Wagner arrived at KSNV (then KVBC-TV) in 2001 with his wife and future co-anchor, Kim. He began his Vegas career reporting in the field before becoming a meteorologist. He later joined Kim on the anchor desk for the long-running “Wake Up With the Wagners” morning show. He’s since moved on from mornings and is now holding down the anchor’s desk in the late afternoon and evenings.
In the TV news business, a two-decade career in one market, at one station, is the rarest of rare achievements. To do it in Las Vegas and stay at the top of your game through station ownership changes, economic ups and downs, and frequent shift changes is akin to seeing a unicorn with a leprechaun riding on its back.
“My first professional TV gig was in 1984, so this year, I passed a huge milestone,” Wagner says. “I wouldn’t say there are many people in our business who have been broadcasting for 40 years, so I take pride in that.
“And the coolest thing about my job is I get to inform my neighbors and friends and fellow Las Vegans about what’s going on in their community—what a privilege, what an honor.”
Las Vegas Now Senior Producer
Every TV journalist arriving in a new market wants to report on history-making events. Natalia Melsenido is one of the few who made history the moment she stepped in front of the cameras at the KLAS-TV studio just off the Strip.
The Wyoming-born, Bolivia-raised producer and host changed the game from the jump, bringing Spanish-language entertainment news segments to the station’s “Las Vegas Now” lifestyle show. Melsenido’s red carpet interviews—honed during her pre-Vegas years in Oklahoma City—not only brought diversity to the city’s reporting landscape but also gave the young journalist a foundation of social media cred that’s grown “Las Vegas Now’s” fanbase beyond the traditionally older demos that dominate today’s TV news audience.
“Before I came here, I didn’t know everything Las Vegas has to offer, and I didn’t realize that entertainment and hospitality go hand-in-hand,” she says. “I’d lived in the States for almost 10 years, and I’d seen Las Vegas in movies and TV—I was still surprised by how much happens in this city.”
It’s easy to forget how spoiled we are when it comes to entertainment. Melsenido recalls driving hours to attend concerts back in the Sooner State. “Artists didn’t even come to Oklahoma City; they went to Tulsa or Dallas,” she says of her last hometown. Now, she wakes up every morning to her “dream” job, meeting and greeting celebs on the red carpets.
“I don’t think I’d ever interviewed a celebrity until I got to Vegas,” she says. When asked which star left the greatest impression, Melsenido cheekily shifts into fangirl mode, describing her first time meeting Backstreet Boys star A.J. McLean at a Westgate charity event in 2021.
“I almost started to cry, but I was like, ‘Be professional, don’t cry,’” she says, laughing. “I asked friends from Bolivia to send questions and he was so real. When else will anybody from a third-world country get to ask their music crush a question?”
Four years into the gig, Melsenido has made herself a fixture of Las Vegas entertainment journalism and is set to be the face of Las Vegas Now’s Hispanic Heritage Month coverage in September.
She explains that her reporting will combine the traditional lineup of celebrities and concerts on the Strip with community-focused events that have made her feel right at home.
“I don’t want to leave Las Vegas. I love it here,” she says. “I can have a slow life 20 minutes away, or if I want fast-paced, it’s all right on the Strip.
“You really do have the best of both worlds.”
Channel 13 Action News Anchor
Moving to a new city is never easy, and Las Vegas tends to throw its TV journalists into the deep end upon arrival—use The Strat as a compass and make sure you’re pronouncing “Nevada” correctly.
Fortunately for KTNV-TV morning anchor Justin Hinton, an adjustment period wasn’t all that necessary. Like most local TV journalists, he moved around the country—Beaumont, Texas; Asheville, North Carolina; Washington, D.C.—while working his way up the ladder. However, the Emmy-winner arrived in Las Vegas in 2022 with an advantage, having seen the city as a kid starting in the late ’90s.
“I grew up in San Diego and over the years, many folks on my mom’s side of the family moved to Las Vegas,” Hinton says. “Now, my mom’s here, my grandmother, my great aunt—probably about 30 of us are now locals.
“Having family here makes me more connected to the community.”
Hinton says family also keeps him grounded. There’s no way he can “fake it” in front of them, and they’re too quick to call him out if they catch him slipping into TV news cliches.
“When I first started, I had all of this pressure in my head to act a certain way, ‘you’ve got to be this or that,’” he recalls. “When I got comfortable being myself on air, that’s when I did the best, and that’s when I could help people get what they need.
“Our job is to connect with the viewer, and when I had that blockade—‘How to be an anchor’—in my head, I wasn’t being myself. These last couple of years, I’ve grown into that more and just being yourself is the best you can be on the air.”
That comes with experience, but it also comes with knowing the city. When Hinton first started visiting as a kid, Las Vegas was a mid-size TV market, and family fun was limited to Circus Circus. Today, Vegas is a Top 50 market and a world-class city and surveying the landscape from an adult’s perspective hits differently, Hinton says. His neighborhood ties have deepened, and the broader challenges of Southern Nevada living have become more apparent.
“I’m always trying to find solutions, especially when it comes to traffic, for example, or education and politics, which are the two main beats I cover here,” he says. “An informed community is so important, especially considering the amount of disinformation and misinformation out there.
“It’s important that we’re able to connect people to the right path.”
News 3 Today Anchor
One thing that’s often overlooked in the TV news business is institutional knowledge. Mastering the journalist’s playbook, in many cases contributing to it, and bringing a perspective and understanding of your community to the anchor desk every morning—that can’t be faked and replaced. That’s what makes Kim Wagner an institution in Las Vegas broadcasting.
“Las Vegas is at the center of pop culture, and every breaking news story has a Las Vegas connection,” the KSNV-TV morning anchor explains. “The audience remembers these stories, and they remember the reporters and anchors who covered them.
“If you don’t have people in the newsroom that know the history of the community, or people with the sources that will tip them off to big stories, the coverage doesn’t get expanded; the anniversaries don’t get celebrated, the cautionary tales are forgotten.”
A little-known fact about Kim Wagner: she’s a native Nevadan. Reno, but it still counts, and no one holds that against her. The University of Florida graduate, like many in the news business, moved around a lot early in her career, ultimately landing in Las Vegas with her husband, Dana, in 2001.
“If I could go back and talk to that girl who moved here from Sacramento to be with Dana, I would tell her, ‘This is the best move you could ever make,’” she says.
The couple raised their daughter, Kate, in Summerlin and spent years passing each other by in the newsroom as they worked opposite shifts—weekends, days and nights. In 2007, they were named co-anchors of KSNV’s “Wake Up with the Wagners” morning show for 15 years before Dana returned to anchoring KSNV’s evening newscasts.
That’s called spreading your Wagners around—team coverage from dawn till dusk.
Over the years, both have had opportunities to take their talents elsewhere. When asked why they chose to stay, Kim gives two reasons.
“This is the city for local news and, really, the city for anyone who loves news,” she says. “It’s Vegas; it’s on the cutting edge of everything—sports, gaming, tech, music, fashion and we’re a battleground political state; everything is here.”
The second reason is the same for a lot of us. Home means Nevada.
“Look at everything we’ve seen and been to,” she says. “Even if it’s a place we know is not going to last, we make our memories there, and we know there’s going to be something new coming, and we’ll make memories there too.”