A popular reporter and anchor who got his start at Duluth's KBJR-TV will return to the station next week after spending the past eight years in larger markets around the country.
Edward Moody, who left Duluth in 2007, will be a weekend anchor and producer and weekday reporter for the local NBC affiliate. His first day on-air is Wednesday, and he returns to the anchor seat on April 4.
"It's like going back home," Moody said. "That's where I learned how to be a journalist. To come back to Duluth to where I started and to basically do the only thing I know how to do for a living, I'm a very fortunate person."
Moody left KBJR-TV for a job at WHAM-TV in Rochester, N.Y., and then went to WXIN-TV in Indianapolis where he had two of his biggest stories: He covered the stage collapse during a Sugarland concert at the Indiana State Fair and was nominated for an Emmy Award for breaking news. He also covered Super Bowl XLVI.
Since returning to Minnesota, Moody said, he had been splitting his time between living in the Twin Cities and Duluth, where his longtime partner lives.
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Moody was at WCCO-TV in Minneapolis for two years and left at the end of the summer. After 10 years in the business, Moody said, he re-evaluated his priorities and decided to put his personal life ahead of his career.
"I looked around and I didn't have the relationship with my family that I wanted and I didn't have the friends that I wanted and needed in my life," Moody said. "I had devoted so much time and energy to my career and moving around in my career, that my personal life took a backseat and, 10 years in, it was noticeable."
Moody, a native of Kansas City, said he and his partner decided his next move wasn't going to be for a job, it was going to be for his life. They decided to make Duluth their home. For the past six months he's been enjoying the North Shore, spending time with their pets and cooking, he said.
"I wake up every morning and I'm lucky enough to have a great view of Lake Superior," Moody said. "I look out at that lake and it gives me everything I need from that."
Moody hadn't planned to get back into TV, he said, but when Billy Wagness left Duluth for a job in Green Bay, Wis., there was an opening at his former station. Moody said he sent KBJR-TV news director Barbara Reyelts an email expressing interest in the position.
Station manager David Jensch said Moody was a favorite with viewers during his time at the station and generated a lot of positive phone calls, emails and letters.
"He has the ability, through television, to reveal his personality," Jensch said. "There is some magical skill that some people have, that they're just telegenic. He had a legion of fans.
"He has a great storytelling ability in his anchoring and his writing. Edward had an innate ability to ask good questions and then listen to the answers. He could write that into this really great television story. People felt that storytelling and connected it to him. We quickly found him to be someone who motivated viewers."
