TV Talk: WTAE hires meteorologist and Butler native Jill Szwed
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A couple of months after the departure of weekend morning meteorologist Kasey Reigner, WTAE-TV hired Butler native Jill Szwed to join its weather team, which will again be back up to five forecasters.
Szwed is currently at the Albany, N.Y., ABC-Fox duopoly affiliates WTEN-TV/WXXA-TV, as a weekday morning meteorologist until Jan. 26. At Channel 4, Szwed will work weekend mornings and fill in on weekdays. She starts at WTAE the week of Feb. 5.
Szwed earned a bachelor of science degree in meteorology with a minor in communications from Saint Louis University and is a member of the American Meteorological Society.
A 2010 graduate of Saint Joseph High School in Natrona Heights, Szwed said she’s been pinching herself since she got the offer to return to her hometown market.
“In this industry, you always hope that someday home will call and offer you a job,” she said in a phone interview Friday morning. “With the ebbs and flows in your career, you never know.”
Szwed interned with Jeff Verszyla when he worked at KDKA-TV and with Stephen Cropper at WPXI-TV.
In addition to forecasting, Szwed intends to use her interest and background in science to do STEM reporting for Channel 4 weekdays, with hopes to cover everything from technology and science to this year’s solar eclipse.
“I hope to make this my niche during my weekdays, working to share those stories,” she said, “whether it’s the great tech companies in Pittsburgh, medical research, anything related to science or the environment, which is obviously at the forefront of all of our lives, how it’s impacting our lifestyle and what kind of planet we want to leave.”
Prior to her three-and-a-half-year stint in Albany, Szwed worked as an afternoon and weekend evening meteorologist at WLEX-TV in Lexington, Ky., and before that, she was a morning forecaster and traffic anchor at WDTV-TV in Clarksburg, W.Va.
“It is incredibly humbling to know that I will be serving the community that I grew up in and a part of a rock star weather team,” Szwed wrote in social media posts announcing her departure from WTEN.
In her WTEN bio, Szwed said snowstorms, flooding and a tornado in Downtown Pittsburgh (the 1998 tornado over Mt. Washington) sparked her interest in weather when she was in middle school.
Szwed told the Albany Times-Union she cheers for the Steelers, Penguins and Pirates and that while working in Lexington she had the opportunity to broadcast from the Kentucky Derby.
“I am excited to reunite with my family and friends, and to serve the community that helped to make me the person that I am today,” Szwed wrote in a post to News10.com.
Szwed said her parents still live in Butler, she has a sister in Wexford and grandparents in Butler and Scottdale.
“It’s a big honor and privilege knowing that friends and family will now be able to turn on the TV and not just join the live stream [watching from outside the broadcast area],” she said. “I can be part of their regular viewing.”
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