WZMQ TV-19 is Marquette’s newest CBS affiliate news station, one that several graduates and current students work for, and has only recently begun broadcasting live.

“Our [WZMQ TV-19] studio did not exist prior to about mid-September,” said Megan Tarcea, a junior multimedia production major and a technical director at WZMQ. “Andrew Hoover … [and] Joe Sigourney, they were the ones that started it up. We started actually in the basement of the Peter White Library in the children’s room.”

Many students deal with the struggle of balancing school and a job, and it seems that the management at WZMQ understands that too.

Scott Minshall, a junior majoring in multimedia journalism and a general assignment multimedia journalist at WZMQ, said Northern and WZMQ both accommodate well with students’ schedules. 

“A lot of my professors at Northern … are really awesome about working around my work schedule and allowing me to … work and it offers me real-time feedback in class and to receive credit for some of those assignments,” Minshall said. “WZMQ, the same way, the class comes first. All of my bosses [at WZMQ] say ‘you’re a student first.'”

Not only is WZMQ flexible and cooperative, but according to Sarah Blakely, the executive producer and anchor at WZMQ, the station is doing something unique for TV.

“What intrigued me about TV-19 was that they were a new concept for TV,” Blakely said. “This idea of using primarily local talent to do the news and use people who are already here, who know the U.P., who love the U.P. to tell stories about the U.P.”

WZMQ has not only been covering news stories for Marquette, but also the U.P. in general. The station has an NMU student on staff who’s currently working as the Iron Mountain bureau reporter.

“It was actually in my sports broadcasting class,” said Aimée Doyle, a senior multimedia production major and the Iron Mountain bureau reporter. “One of the students was like, ‘you should come work for WZMQ and you could be the Iron Mountain bureau reporter.’ And I was like, ‘that would be a really big deal for Iron Mountain, be a really big deal for Marquette to have a bureau on the west side.’ That’s how they drew me in.”

Students that were interviewed said they enjoyed how much they were able to get to know Marquette and the U.P. while working at WZMQ.

“One of my favorite things that I’ve experienced while working at WZMQ, is I am so much more in tune and in touch with the Marquette area and the U.P. in general,” Tarcea said. “I’m only a part-time resident, but it has made me feel like Marquette is my city. I love this town. It’s my home.”

WZMQ will be broadcasting live to cover the start of the annual UP200 in downtown Marquette on Feb. 16, powered by NMU.