Wendy Rieger, who appeared in the popular news bulletin at 5 p.m. on the NBC WRC-TV station in Washington (Channel 4) for more than 30 years, winning over the loyal audience with her cheerful and well-crafted reports, she died on April 16 in a hostel. installation in Montgomery County. He was 65. The cause was glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer. An appendix to radio journalism for more than four decades, Ms Rieger has won local Emmy Awards, including one for a reference to Vietnam 20 years after the war. She made headlines when she underwent open heart surgery in the fall of 2020 to deal with a rapid heartbeat (atrial fibrillation) and a defect in a mitral valve. In May 2021, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and had most of it surgically removed and retired in December after 33 years in the WRC. Ms Rieger was an actress in Norfolk when she made her journalism debut in the late 1970s, earning extra money as a news reader for a Tidewater radio station. A colleague of the station advised her to “sound” like a news person – “You know, serious”, they told her. “Like Walter Cronkite.” What Wendy Rieger learned from Washington After assessing her less prosperous career on stage – “There is no closer way to get to Broadway than doing night theater in Norfolk”, she joked – she changed paths. Ms. Rieger spent much of the 1980s on public and commercial radio, serving on WAMU, WLTT-FM, and WTOP, and gained recognition for her attractive personality and thoughtful handling of hard news and community traits. He also worked as a reporter over the weekend at CNN’s Washington bureau and, in 1988, joined WRC-TV as a nightly street reporter during the crack epidemic. He started responding to evening newscasts on the weekend in 1996 and moved to 5 p.m. daily in 2001, sharing the table first with Susan Kidd and later with Jim Handley. Four years later, Ms Rieger reported to a woman who had discovered she was allergic to chemicals in her home and found environmentally friendly ways to solve the problem. The episode led Ms. Rieger to start a weekly section and an accompanying blog called Going Green. “It’s easy to change a few things – change some light bulbs, wash clothes in cold water,” she told the Washingtonian in 2008, when her magazine awarded her a prize for her commitment to safety and environmental protection. “We want people to do this with joy.” Going Green, with tutorials on how to save energy and commit to healthier lifestyles for humans and pets, has become so popular that many NBC stations have started broadcasting, and NBC Nightly News has released a similar feature. On the air, Ms. Rieger tended to show a personally revealing, self-deprecating side when the mood was right. Whipped by the wind and rain while covering a hurricane, she said ironically to the audience: “Note to yourself: waterproof mascara!” She followed with her observation as this vortex had moderated and created only tiny waves in the Atlantic Ocean: The magnificent storm “goes completely flat,” he said, “somewhat like my life on a date.” Wendy Bell Rieger was born in Norfolk on April 18, 1956. Her father was an airline pilot and her mother was an English teacher and later a duplicator. Ms Rieger was 8 years old when they divorced. He graduated from the American University in 1980 with a degree in journalism. Her first marriage to CNN producer Sol Levine ended in divorce. In 2021 she married retired WRC-TV news photographer Dan Buckley. In addition to her husband, the survivors include three brothers. As a former linen-haired actress, Ms. Rieger often appeared on lists of Washington’s most attractive local celebrities. She got tired of the flattery as her career progressed, saying she wanted to stay focused on her job. She was proud to find a personal style of broadcasting the news, which The Post once described as “self-deprecating, with a point of view and humorous in turn”. She called it just a reflection of herself. “You have to be yourself in the air, you can not go there and project some fake personality, just go ahead and expect people to believe it,” he said. “Eventually you get the truth and it’s better to be comfortable for you, since that’s what people on the other side of the camera see.”
