EXTRA: Chicago native “integrates” Utah TV news; a long overdue move!

CROW: Will she return home?

Nadia Crow might not have been born in Chicago, but she grew up here and is as much a native as anyone else.

And like a lot of people trying to get into the news business, she has shown a willingness to move to wherever work is. Her career path includes a stay in South Bend, Ind., and it now has her as an anchor of the local newscasts for KTVX-TV, an ABC network affiliate in Salt Lake City.

BUT WHAT MAKES the 27-year-old unique? She’s African-American, and it seems she’s the first black person to be an anchor for a television newscast in Utah. Who’d have thought such a “first” would still be possible this late into the 21^st Century.

But it’s true. The Salt Lake Tribune newspaper gave Crow a decent write-up. It also is encouraging to see that station management acknowledges that her hiring has been a positive and there hasn’t been open resistance to the idea of a black woman being the face of the news.

Even though Utah (at 2.76 million people, only 29,287 of whom are African-American) isn’t exactly a place loaded with black faces. The Latino (358,340 people), Asian (55,285 people) and American Indian (32,927 people) populations are larger.

Although it would seem that there were more black people living in Utah in 2010 (according to the Census Bureau) than there were native Hawaiians (24,554 people). So there!

AND INTERESTING TO read her observation that Chicago television news could have used more black females as role models when she was growing up here, considering how the city itself (at 2.7 million people, the whole state of Utah is barely bigger) has so many differing ethnic groups that no one group can claim to be an all-dominating presence.

Perhaps what we get to look forward to in the future – should Crow decide she ever wants to come back to Chicago. She certainly couldn’t be worse than some of the television knuckleheads we now endure on our nightly newscasts!

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