New KETV Reporter Is Missouri Grad

The newest reporter at KETV (Cox Channel 9) is a past Broadcast Pacemaker Award winner.

Lisa Stites won the National Scholastic Press Association Pacemaker - considered the Pulitzer Prize of high school journalism - in 2001 for "Olga's Story." Her report focused on a Ukranian orphan, abandoned because of birth defects caused by the Cherynobyl disaster, but adopted by a Kansas family.

Stites makes a jump up 61 markets from WIBW (CBS) in Topeka, Kan., where she went by her maiden name of Boschert. The May 2005 graduate of the University of Missouri also worked as a reporter and web producer at KOMU, the university's own commercial station which operates as an NBC affiliate.

Stites said she likes reporting because she learns something new everyday.

"Whether it's something about the world, the community, an individual or a reflection on myself, I feel like reporting makes me a more well-rounded person,' Stites said. "For me, life is not about what I accomplish monetarily or in recognition. It's about learning, experiencing new things and making others know they count."

Stites was born in St. Louis but grew up in Brookside/Kansas City, Mo., and Leawood, Kan. Her move to Omaha puts her closer to her fiance, Erik, a first year medical student at Creighton University. The two met when they were in school in Columbia, she said.

Stites' experience includes an internship at NBC's London Bureau and reports for WIBW from areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina.