April 24, 2006

You're welcome, Chitown.

Mai Martinez leaves FOX 6 for Chicago

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Bye-bye, Mai.

FOX 6 reporter Mai Martinez has left the station to go to work at a station in Chicago, the third-biggest TV market in the country.

Martinez did not return requests for an interview before leaving FOX 6 this past week.

However, she told other reporters around town that she was going to Chicago but could not say which station because of a confidentiality agreement. She also told them she would make about $500,000 over four years. [...]

125K a year. As they say, nice gig if you can get it.

I'm still holding out hope that one day all of these media types will give up on hiring shockingly beautiful young single women, and realize that grouchy, chubby old guys who are unwilling to relocate are just as valuable to their organizations. I'm not sure exactly how we are just as valuable, but I am certainly willing to accept $125,000 a year and let someone runs some experiments on it and see what they can come up with.

Anyway, good luck to Ms. Martinez in her new assignment.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at April 24, 2006 11:10 AM
Comments

Yeah, I thought about you when I read that story--since you had noticed Mai's not being on the local Fox website any longer. As you say, our loss is Chicago's gain.

I sometimes wonder how much longer Kate Mundy will be at Channel 42.

Posted by: Stan at April 24, 2006 11:15 AM

Let's see--smart, attractive, single--I would say it can't be very much longer.

::sigh::

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at April 24, 2006 11:41 AM

You had me up to when you used the word smart in a sentence about a TV newsperson. That strikes me as a serious oxymoron or is the ability to read a teleprompter now a sign of intelligence?

Posted by: Larry Anderson at April 24, 2006 12:21 PM

No--it's just that every once in a while, someone with some brains decides to go into that line of work. I found the Google cache of her WBRC bio: "Mai's a graduate of Jacksonville State University, where she majored in Communication and English and minored in Spanish. [...] She says growing up an "army brat" made her want to see the world, which she does every opportunity she gets. Mai's been fortunate enough to live all over the US and abroad, and has visited almost every country in Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean. [...] Mai also enjoys reading, writing, [and] skiing and other outdoor sports. She also has a strong passion for learning foreign languages. Mai's fluent in Spanish (thanks in part to her Cuban father), and also speaks some Hungarian, Italian, French, German, and Czech. She hopes to one day be fluent in all these languages, but first, she plans to tackle Vietnamese, which her mother's been trying to teach her since childhood."

And here I am still trying to learn English.

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at April 24, 2006 12:46 PM

Why didn't you just say she is a JSU graduate?

That automatically puts her in the "smart" category along with some lesser known members of the AoW.

Posted by: Larry Anderson at April 24, 2006 12:55 PM

Sorry--didn't mean to go overboard.

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at April 24, 2006 12:59 PM