WWAY’s Hannah Patrick moves to the evening news.
After nearly three years anchoring WWAY 3’s Good Morning Carolina and News at Noon, Hannah Patrick joins co-anchor Randy Aldridge and Chief Meteorologist Lee Haywood on WWAY Evening News beginning Monday, July 13.
Patrick is trading places with anchor Donna Gregory, who will move to Good Morning Carolina.
The switch, initiated by Gregory, who recently lost her mother to COVID-19, gives her a balanced work-life schedule so she can spend more time with her son, a middle-school student athlete. The opportunity is “good on a personal level for Donna and on a professional level for me,” Patrick says.
The move to evening anchor is a promotion for Patrick. She will be reunited with Aldridge, with whom she co-anchored Good Morning Carolina from 2017 to 2018. And she couldn’t be more excited.
“I’m looking forward to being back with Randy,” Patrick says. “And I am also looking forward to my alarm clock not going off in the middle of the night! But I will truly miss my morning coworkers and the bond we’ve formed.”
Professionally, Patrick feels she has a lot to learn, and anchoring the evening time slot will help get her “out of my comfort zone.” She is up for the challenge of reporting on more breaking news on the evening show.
Patrick first joined WWAY as a reporter in May 2014, and in the summer of 2015, she became the weekend news anchor, covering a variety of stories. Whether it is a crime story or a feature story, she is passionate about those that make an impact on viewers, including her WWAY series #Unsolved, in which she explores stories of unsolved crimes in our area. “Even if I can’t solve them, I’m getting to let the families tell their stories one more time,” she says. “I feel like I’m bringing something to them.”
For Patrick, that is the value local news brings to a community and smaller markets — stories that viewers can personally connect to, “whether it’s good news or bad, it’s information and it’s a distraction,” she says. “A couple of years ago we stated Good Evening Wilmington from 5 to 5:30 because we heard from so many viewers who were tired of seeing only bad things on the news. It’s a half hour of upbeat, positive stories.”
In her college career, Patrick interned for WXIA in Atlanta, where she was given the opportunity to write and edit her own stories. But she finds in smaller markets like Wilmington and the surrounding areas that she has more opportunities as a journalist and anchor. “Right now, one day I might be producing or covering a story,” she says. “Or I may pitch an idea and then offer to cover it because it is something I’m so passionate about. Even though this is a smaller market, we have a lot of big news, so I get the balance of a small market with a lot of big stories.”
In addition to co-anchoring the Evening News at 6 p.m., Patrick will also be solo anchoring on CBS at 10 p.m. and 11 p.m.
