Katie Jeffries joined the First Coast News team in May 2012. She moved to Jacksonville from the Tar Heel state where she was the Greenville Bureau Chief and Weekend Morning Anchor at WCTI NewsChannel 12, the ABC/FOX affiliate in New Bern, NC for two years.
She covered issues affecting eastern North Carolina including the prevalence of crime in downtown Greenville, devastating flooding from the Cashie River and the largest murder trial in the area's history.
Katie also had the opportunity to cover several big weather events in eastern North Carolina including Tropical Storm Nicole, the deadly April 2011 tornadoes and Hurricane Irene. Katie says Hurricane Irene is the most intense story she's covered so far. The hurricane eye made landfall over WCTI's viewing area and left towns and homes destroyed. This experience reinforced why she wanted to become a reporter. Katie wanted to be there to give people the information they needed to stay safe and share their stories when they needed help.
Katie grew up in northern Kentucky where her family thought she would become a lawyer or a writer. As it turns out, Katie believes she somewhat combined the two and became a journalist. Her formal name is Kathryn Jeffries, but her friends call her Katie.
Katie graduated summa cum laude from the University of Cincinnati with a BFA in Electronic Media and a minor in Business. While in college, Katie got her feet wet in journalism through an internship at WKRC-TV in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was also awarded the Fredric R. Ziv Award by the University of Cincinnati's Electronic Media Department which gave her the opportunity to move to New York City for a summer internship with CBS's "Guiding Light."
After graduation, Katie began her journalism career as a reporter/fill-in anchor at WHIZ-TV, the NBC affiliate in Zanesville, OH where her story "An Eye in the Sky" received an Ohio AP Award.
