Diane Moca
I¹ve been a writer since a homework assignment in first grade turned into a detailed and lengthy six-page story that the teacher didn¹t believe I wrote by myself (but I did). Because writing was such a passion while I was growing up, I decided to major in journalism at the University of Denver. During my first internship at a TV station in Denver, I was bitten by the broadcast journalism bug. After I graduated with a degree in Mass Communications and a degree in Computer Science, my first career job opportunity was at a local weekly newspaper in Denver, and I grabbed it..

For the next few years I worked as a print journalist for several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Daily News, and freelanced for many national magazines, ranging from Disney Adventures to Us magazine. But I still had a strong desire to use my reporting skills in the broadcasting medium, and I got my first full-time job offer at a station in Rockford, Ill., finally leaving the West Coast and coming home to Illinois, not far from the Chicago suburbs where I was born and raised.

At WREX-TV, I focused on developing my skills as a TV reporter, anchor and producer. But my husband missed his family and friends in California, so I took a job as a reporter at a station in beautiful San Luis Obispo on the central coast of California, where I was a general assignment reporter.
I eventually returned to Los Angeles and covered the entertainment industry for a division of CNN called Turner Entertainment Report. I interviewed hundreds of celebrities, from Dustin Hoffman and Talia Shire to Will Smith and Olivia Newton John.

I left the entertainment world to join a group of disparate reporters pulled together for an innovative new independent station called WAMI-TV, which launched a special news show focusing on investigative stories for the Miami market. I learned a lot about the ups and downs of a start-up venture, but I longed to be back in the Midwest. I found an opportunity to do that at CBS 58 in Milwaukee, where I have been working as a general assignment reporter since 1999.