It was only a matter of time before Ashley Zilka landed at WTAE-TV.
The 33-year-old Rostraver native has wanted to be a journalist since she was in middle school, reading cafeteria announcements to her classmates. During her senior year at Belle Vernon Area High School, she was assigned to shadow someone currently employed in her desired profession. She reached out to Channel 4 and got to tag along with anchor Kelly Frey for a day.
Zilka went on to study broadcast journalism at Duquesne University. One of her adjunct professors happened to be none other than WTAE anchor Mike Clark, who helped her get an internship at the station for a semester. More than a decade later, Zilka is going to be colleagues with Frey and Clark when she joins the WTAE news team Oct. 12 as a nighttime reporter.
“I’ve always known this is where I was going to end up,” Zilka told the Post-Gazette. “I don’t take this opportunity lightly. It has been a dream of mine to work in my hometown. Make it WTAE, and it’s icing on the cake.”
Her road home took her all over the world, including to Italy in 2009 for an almost four-month reporting internship at The Roman Forum magazine. Her broadcasting career began at WHIZ-TV in Zanesville, Ohio, and continued at WROC-TV in Rochester, N.Y., and WCPO-TV in Cincinnati. Before returning to Pittsburgh, she spent three years at KSTP-TV in Saint Paul, Minn.
“The coolest thing is these four cities were all random moves,” Zilka said. “I just ended up connecting with the people there and that’s what made the experiences so great. It’s always a privilege to share people’s stories, but to do it in my hometown is going to be amazing.”
She wants Pittsburgh to be the “fifth and final spot” of her journalism career.
Pittsburgh viewers should know that they’re getting a seasoned reporter in Zilka, who was in the epicenter of the protests and chaos sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis while working on the morning shift at KSTP.
She’ll be helping to bolster a WTAE reporting corps that recently lost reporter David Kaplan to WTTG-TV in Washington, D.C., and weekend morning anchor Chris Lovingood to WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C. Zilka will be the station’s latest on-air hire after Tom Garris replaced Lovingood on the weekend anchor desk in late August. WTAE also added meteorologist Brian Hutton Jr. to its ranks in April.
Zilka also got engaged earlier this year and will be bringing her Minnesota-born fiance to the Steel City with her. Naturally, he’s a Vikings fan, but one of the first things she plans to do is drag him to a Steelers game.
“I was born to be an obnoxious Steelers fan like everyone else who grew up here,” she said. “You always hear ‘Pittsburgh proud,’ and it truly is a thing. We’re passionate about our city and the people who live there, and now I get to be a part of that.”
Zilka can’t wait to get started at WTAE and hopes Pittsburgh viewers will be as excited to meet her as she is to be coming home.
“I am thrilled to get to know them and get to hear their stories,” she said. “When you tell someone’s stories and it makes an impact, there’s nothing more rewarding. And I can’t wait to do that.”
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: September 27, 2021, 1:00 p.m.