Samantha Cortese
Samantha Cortese
Samantha Cortese is a Journalist with KTLA 5 News. She is an Emmy-nominated reporter and an anchor with a passion for on air and (the ever-evolving world of) online reporting. Samantha brings energy to news, digital, and social media to keep you informed and engaged. She is willing to show some personality and be “human” on the news, while keeping journalistic ethic in reporting.[11]
Education and Early Life
Cortese is a Palm Desert native who was born and raised in the California desert, Samantha is thrilled and proud to continue a career in journalism close to home. She graduated from California State University Fullerton as a Broadcast Journalist where she studied Broadcast journalism and Sexual Health and Relationships. She was a member of Alpha Chi Omega Society while in school.
Samantha proceeded to Chapman University where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in Broadcast Journalism. Samantha was a founder, producer and anchor for Chapman News, Orange County’s only local news broadcast. During this period, She won Cecil B. DeMille Award for the Best Television Show and was also nominated Mir Tukhi Award for excellence in Broadcast journalism. She joined the team at CBS Local 2 while still attending Chapman University full time, making for quite the commute (she survived with podcasts). She created the course; “Importance of Social Media in an Evolving Broadcast Industry”, before leaving the university.[12][13]
Career
She worked at KPSP-TV for two years before joining KESQ, CBS Local 2, KUNA in 2012 where she worked for four years. She joined KTLA in 2018 where she is currently an Anchor, as a digital multimedia journalist and cohost of “5 Live,” KTLA’s digital-only newscast.
Cortese's Experience at KPSP-TV
She joined the KPSP in June 2010 where she served as a Morning Show Producer and a Web Editor for two years. She produced 2-hour morning newscast, with new content each half hour, anchor the breaking news and overnight content a priority. She was also in charge of stacking and writing all news stories, choose and review video and sound, time the newscast with hard breaks, assigning reporter and photographer to news coverage every morning, building of maps, graphics, and lower thirds, and monitoring police and fire scanners. [12]
Coreport Experience at KESQ, CBS Local 2, KUNA
She joined KESQ, CBS Local 2, KUNA in 2012 after leaving KPSP-TV. She served as a Morning reporter between 2012 and 2014, and she served as a News Anchor between 2014 and 2015.
As a morning reporter, Cortese would be live at least nine times every morning on KESQ and CBS Local 2 for breaking news.
She helped in preparing and scheduling interviews with local dignitaries and for feature stories, Writing of scripts, choosing of soundbites, and creating graphics and map information.
She was also responsible for personal, KESQ, and CBS Local 2 social media accounts by posting stories and responding to viewer inquiries/comments.
Emmy was nominated for breaking storm coverage.
As a News Anchor, she anchored the three-hour weekend morning newscast, Adlib live, breaking news and weather.
She makes executive decisions regarding weekend coverage.
She tripled social media following the company in 2015, earning her the Social Media Excellence Award, May 2015.[12]
Personal Life
Samantha was a cheerleader at Palm Desert High School and Chapman University. She coached cheerleading at Palm Desert High School for two years. She was a serious college football fan, and she claimed that cheerleading was her way to have an effect on the game without actually playing. She loves social media her hobbies include traveling (mostly to catch a PAC12 game), cheerleading, yoga (Namaste), amusement parks, and loving her rescue dog, Magic.
She got married to Philip Valenti on 20th of July, 2019.[14]