Courier Staff Writer
The new local news is filled with the bad stuff—shootings, stabbings, rapes, robberies, fires, carjackings…
But in the mid-to-late 1990s, it was Brenda Waters who deviated from the usual, and gave Pittsburgh viewers the good news.
It was a daily staple on KDKA’s highly-ranked 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts back then, further establishing Waters, an African American woman, as a powerful force in Pittsburgh TV news.
KDKA’s 6 p.m. hour-long newscast has long been the market leader in total viewers in its timeslot, but Waters’ “good news” segment wasn’t buried near the end of the show.
The New Pittsburgh Courier flashed back to a KDKA broadcast from June 2, 1999, where Waters told the “good news” stories of motorcycle maker Harley Davidson’s traveling museum making a stop in Washington, Pa., where residents could see some vintage bikes, and a teacher in West Virginia teaching his middle school class the art of turkey calling.
Waters found good news in nearly all Pittsburgh communities; the African American community was no exception.
