Longtime Dallas Anchor Signing Off, Replacement Named

Gloria Campos, one of Dallas-Fort Worth’s best known news anchors, announced on Twitter on Wednesday that she’s retiring after 30 years with WFAA.

“I signed my last contract specifically to end this way,” Campos, 59, said in a phone interview. “They knew I wanted to retire, and I’ve been planning this for probably five years. It finally came to the point where I don’t need to do this. They’ve been very accommodating, and I get to go out on top, on my own terms.”

Campos has been with WFAA since September 1984, when she started as an anchor -- the first featured Hispanic anchor in the DFW market. Before that, she spent nine years at KGBT-TV in Harlingen, her hometown, which was her only other broadcasting job. She started there a week after graduated from Southwest Texas State University in 1976.

“I’ve been working since I was like 15 years old,” said Campos. “In probably one of the most stressful jobs you can have, working in the news business. I’m ready to take it easy for a while.”

“I won’t miss the bad news,” Campos said. “I always thought that I would get jaded or callous, and that would tell me, when I stopped being touched or moved by the news, that it was time to go. But it’s been the exact opposite. It’s taken its toll, all the bad news that I’ve had to share with people. So I’ve tried really hard to deliver the bad news in a compassionate way.”

Carolyn Mungo, WFAA’s executive news director, praised Campos in a memo to staffers announcing the anchor’s retirement.

“Gloria Campos IS WFAA,” Mungo wrote. “She is part of the fabric of this newsroom. Her work has inspired so many, one paragraph does not do it justice.”

Campos’ departure is part of a big on-air shakeup at Channel 8, according to Mungo’s memo. These are some of the other changes:

Cynthia Izaguire who has anchored morning show News 8 Daybreak since 2008, will move to the 5 and 10 p.m. newscasts, co-anchoring with John McCaa, beginning March 10. 

H/T DFW.com