Jacqueline Ingles

(KXAN) - Click here to email story tips to Jacqueline Ingles

What's your position?
Reporter

When did you start at KXAN?
November 2009

What's your hometown?
Chicago

Where did you go to college?
I graduated Summa Cum Laude from Loyola University-Chicago. I went on to receive my master’s in broadcast journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

How did you get started in TV?
My pursuit of having a career in journalism started at the age of five. My parents always watched the nightly news and included us children. While watching the along with them one evening my mom said, ‘Jackie, this would be a great job for you.’ That simple statement planted the seed for my future. While internships weren’t an option at such a young age, I turned to writing, both print and creative. All the while, my parents kept encouraging me to pursue my dream and not give up. Then, during college, I interned at WBBM-TV and for Harry Porterfield at WLS-TV in Chicago. I followed up college with grad school at Northwestern University. While at Medill, I worked as a legal reporter for the Medill News Service. My first job out was as a multi-platform political correspondent for MTV News in conjunction with the Associated Press. I covered the 2008 Presidential election in the State of Illinois from a youth perspective. Following the election, I headed South to work for WCTV as a one-woman-band reporter in their Valdosta, Georgia, bureau. One year later, KXAN called and the rest remains to be written.

What was your most memorable story?
It’s a tie between doing continuing coverage of the Family Secrets trial at the Dirksen Federal Building in Downtown Chicago and the Valentine’s Day massacre at Northern Illinois University in 2008. While the federal trial had tons of compelling documents and sordid details to scour through regarding Chicago mobsters, it lacked the raw emotion I found on the NIU campus just hours after students in a lecture hall were gunned down.

What's your favorite thing about Austin/Hill Country?
The scenery is breathtaking. It is hard to believe that such a serene place exists so close to a city. The landscape is doing a great job of luring me outdoors.

What's your guilty pleasure?
Diet Coke

How would you like to make a difference?
My goal is to tell stories that encourage people to engage in productive dialogue. Hopefully, by informing viewers of issues surrounding them, positive changes in both people and society as a whole will ensue.

What's your favorite band or musician?
Eclectic is the best way to describe my musical taste. The music in my iPod ranges from oldies like Otis Redding and The Mamas & the Papas to Pink and Jay Z.

What's your favorite movie?
Back to the Beach (you just have to love the beach movies Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello made!)

What's your favorite TV show?
Forensic Files

What's your favorite food?
Chicken Parmesan

What are some of your interests?
Cooking and baking (I consider myself a culinary ninja), my tuxedo cat Wooter, reading medical mysteries and talking endlessly on the phone with my parents, sister Jayne and brother Bob.

Check out Jacqueline's blog, "In Ingles Please."