Rebecca Wu

NEWS FROM CHANNEL 5: Rebecca Wu, a news anchor at KSDK-TV (Channel 5), is rumored to be leaving the station to take a job with the FBI. Wu joined KSDK in 2003 after working as a reporter and fill-in anchor at KPTV-TV in Portland, Ore., beginning in 1999. She went there from Jacksonville, Fla.

Wu did not return messages and repeated phone calls Wednesday. Mike Shipley, news director at the station, said Wednesday: “There are some developments with Rebecca but I can’t go into the details. Call me back in a week.”

On the plus side of the ledger, the station has hired Ashley Yarchin to be a reporter. Yarchin, of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., is rumored to be the niece of Leisa
Zigman, also a reporter at KSDK.

Yarchin did a stint at KSDK some years ago, where she has said she “did everything from rolling teleprompter to off-air reporting.” She graduated from Washington University with a degree in Comparative Arts in 2002.

Ashley Yarchin

While earning a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University, Yarchin worked in Washington as a capital correspondent for KMID-TV in Midland, Texas. After graduation from Northwestern, she was hired as a crime reporter for the West Texas station.

She left there in 2005 to be a general assignment reporter at WLTX-TV in South Carolina. That station and KSDK are owned by Gannett.

Here’s an update for those who call and write to ask about Deanne Lane. I was at a graduation party for a friend’s daughter on Saturday. It was a purely social event. Lane, who is friends with the couple that was holding the party, walked in, saw me and left. She has not returned phone calls since she was fired from KSDK in April. I have no idea what she is doing at this time.