RIVERA NOW REPORTING IN ORLANDO

Former Southeastern Channel news reporter-anchor Paul Rivera has been hired as a TV news reporter in the nation’s 18th largest market at WESH-TV Ch. 2 (NBC) in Orlando, Fla. At WESH, Rivera will cover and report news in the Orlando, Daytona Beach and Melbourne areas. One of his first stories at WESH was a look at the legacy of Mister Rogers upon the opening of the new movie about Rogers. Rivera moves to Orlando from Columbia, South Carolina (DMA 74) where he served as anchor-reporter for two years at WIS-TV Ch. 10 (CBS). At WIS-TV Rivera covered Hurricanes Florence, Michael and Dorian and spent a day at the U.S.-Mexico border to report on the border crisis with Columbia mayor Steven Benjamin’s protest of the immigration policy. Prior to WIS-TV, Rivera was anchor-reporter for KLTV Ch. 7 (NBC) in Tyler, Tx. (DMA 114) where he covered the April 29th Canton Tornadoes and the nationally-televised case of missing child Kayla Gomez Orozco. Rivera also traveled back to Louisiana to help fellow Raycom (now Gray TV) station WAFB-TV Ch. 9 (CBS) cover the historic Baton Rouge Flood of 2016. While at the Southeastern Channel as anchor-reporter for “Northshore News”, Rivera won multiple first-place regional awards for his news stories and anchoring given by the Society of Professional Journalists (Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee) and Southeast Journalism Conference (eight states in the southeast U.S.). In 2015 Rivera was named Louisiana’s “Student Broadcaster of the Year” given by the Louisiana Association of Broadcasters from all college television and radio students in the state. As a student Rivera also moderated the 2015 Louisiana Gubernatorial Forum co-produced by the Southeastern Channel and Louisiana Public Broadcasting. He graduated in May of 2015. Rivera is bilingual with his family hailing from Puerto Rico. Spanish is his first language, and he often reports in both English and Spanish as evidenced by his latest bilingual demo reel.