Launched in 2005, WellesleyWeston Magazine is a quarterly publication tailored to Wellesley and Weston residents and edited to enrich the experience of living in two of Massachusetts' most desirable communities.
Issue link: https://wellesleywestonmagazine.epubxp.com/i/359840
there's good reason why Boston's WBZ-TV news anchor and award-winning journalist Paula Ebben is welcomed into the kitchens and family rooms of so many households across Massachusetts. "Paula is one of the warmest and most competent journalists around. She is a supremely talented storyteller," comments WBUR news director Tom Melville, the professional who Paula credits with giving her a big break back when Tom was an executive at New England Cable News (NECN). A loyal viewer of Boston's CBS news station concurs, speaking about Paula's gifts this way: "Watching Paula it feels as if I am part of a conversation rather than a broadcast. It's as if she is talking to me. She recounts versus reports, [and she's] comfort- able with her content and herself." A central Massachusetts native raised in Shrewsbury, Paula attended high school at Notre Dame Academy in Worcester and went on to earn a BA degree in English from Boston College. She married a BC graduate, worked in Boston for a couple of years, started a family, and stayed at home for the next ten years to raise her four children before navigating her way into broadcast journalism. Today, she co-anchors CBS Boston's WBZ-TV News at 5:00 pm and noon, and reports across the newscasts, including her signature "Eye on Education" segments that focus on positive innovative initiatives and outcomes in education today. WellesleyWeston Magazine: When and how did you decide that a career in TV news was for you? Paula Ebben: I come from a family of "newsy" people. My maternal grandparents were both newspaper reporters for The Boston Post, one of the big eight papers of the day in Boston. My mother often told me that I had a "nose for news" just like my grandmother. My great grand- father immigrated to Massachusetts from Ireland and also was a newspaper reporter. In 1914, he traveled to Rome to cover Cardinal O'Connell's participation in the papal conclave. Exactly 100 years later, I was in Rome to cover the canonization of Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII. What a wonderful coincidence. I was twelve years old when I set my sights on a career in TV news. In fact, I distinctly remember thinking that my dream was not just TV news, but specifically TV news in Boston, for in my mind Boston was 60 W e l l e s l e y W e s t o n M a g a z i n e | f a l l 2 0 1 4 L I Z S U N E B Y writer / B R I A N S M I T H photographer an interview with paula ebben A " Nose for News "