Lots of Ponce

The Sun-Times reported Tuesday that WMAQ-TV is set to hire another Ponce... Anthony Ponce, son of WTTW's Phil Ponce and younger brother of WLS-TV reporter, Dan Ponce. This is just a little incestuous. How many Ponce's can they get in the Chicago media market?

The story is kind of funny on its own, but the way the article was written sounded like it was an advertisement taken out by the Ponce family to announce their son's new job. It was quite humorous that Phil was interviewed for the article. My favorite quote:

"I've been on cloud nine ever since Anthony got the news," said proud father Phil. "For Ann and me to have both our sons back home doing what they love is a dream come true.
"And I'm thrilled that each will be working at one of the top local news stations in the country. Now if we could just get our daughter back home from Manhattan!"

Now, I know nothing about Anthony's reporting ability. He has most recently been at WISH-TV in Indianapolis and maybe he's done a great job, who knows. He, like his brother, is also a Medill grad. Oh, and they both went to Indiana University for undergrad. This is a lot of family togetherness. That's great; I love my family but I just don't know if I could follow my sibling's every move.

I know families often get involved in the same profession and maybe they have some sort of "broadcast gene," but I highly doubt it. I think this just really proves the point that "it's who you know" that can really get you ahead in any profession.

I actually think Dan Ponce is pretty good. He's young-looking and fresh-faced, so he brings a different look to the newscast. And I think he does a pretty good job, so I can't say he doesn't deserve it. But I do think there are probably many other deserving journalists with more experiece, but that's just how these things work.

I just think it might get kind of humorous to see two brothers reporting at the same time slot. Hey, they'll probably even run into each other while out on stories, which seems like some sort of conflict of interest, but I guess there is nothing you can do. If this were any other profession, I would think nothing of it. The problem is that it's television and so it's really noticable.

I hope that when I see Anthony on NBC5 for the first time, he does a great job and I can feel confident that he was hired for the right reasons. I also can't fault him for using his connections; I fully plan to use mine and to network to try to position myself for employment. Hey, maybe I should shut up because as a fellow Medill grad, the Ponce's could be in my network one day.