As a military brat, WBAL-TV weekend morning anchor and weekday morning reporter Jennifer Franciotti was a bit of a nomad in her formative years. “I was born in Guantanamo Bay,” says Franciotti, “then we lived in Iceland and Hawaii and Groton, Connecticut.” After her father retired from the service during her sophomore year of high school, the family settled in St. Joseph, Missouri, “where the Pony Express began and Jesse James ended,” she says, laughing.

But it wasn’t until 1997, when she moved to Baltimore, that she finally felt like she had a permanent home. “We moved all over the place, so I never felt like I belonged anywhere,” says Franciotti, sitting on a Victorian-style wooden chair at her homey dining-room table. “When my husband, Mike, and I started dating, he took me to Ocean City for the first time, and I instantly fell in love with Maryland, with Ocean City, with the accents, with the crabs, with the Bergers cookies, with the little neighborhoods. For me, my greatest pride is saying I’m from Maryland.”

Even so, the avowed Ravens fan brought along with her a piece of the past. When Franciotti left home for the first time, her mom gave her a box of index cards filled with family heirloom recipes such as ham and potato casserole, chicken crunch casserole with Chinese noodles, and traditional Christmas cookies. “These are way-back-when recipes,” she says. “I still keep them in my cupboard. As I learned to cook, I started reading cookbooks and would do things on my own.”

These days, Franciotti, who recently lost 25 pounds, takes a health-conscious approach to cooking. “I’ve gained and lost 25 pounds so many times in my life,” she says, “I’ve struggled with my weight my whole life—I’ve been lucky that it’s never gotten so high that it has affected my career—but I’ve been able to keep it off this time.”

When Franciotti left home for the first time, her mom gave her a box of recipes.

In addition to preparing the meals for her work days, which start when she leaves the house at 2:50 a.m. to go on air at 5 a.m., Franciotti exercises daily. “I love to walk,” she says. “I usually walk two to four miles every day. I’ll walk between my live hits in the studio and on days when I’m anchoring. If we have a break between shots, I’ll put on my tennis shoes, and then when I’m reporting and out in the field, I walk between 6 and 6:45 a.m. whenever I’m able to before getting ready to go back on the air.”

Franciotti, who is a graduate of Northwest Missouri State University, has been working at WBAL for 17 years now, but she got into broadcast journalism quite by accident. “I had no idea what I wanted to do,” she recalls. “My mom had the course catalogue to the university, and one day she opened the catalogue and saw ‘broadcasting,’ and she said, ‘You’d be good at that.’ And I was such a rule follower and so close with my parents, I figured that they knew what was good for me. So, I was like, ‘Okay.’”

Franciotti landed a full-time morning anchor gig right out of college, after an internship at a small ABC affiliate in Missouri at the tender age of 20. After a move to Maryland, she worked in radio for a time and was a traffic reporter from 1998 until 2001. “It was so much fun,” she says. “And being in a helicopter was a great way to learn the area and also to see why traffic is so messed up. I knew it wasn’t going to last forever, and I probably shouldn’t say this, but I took everyone up in the helicopter with me that I could. I took my optometrist, I took my hairdresser at the time, because it was such a unique experience.”

Even since becoming an anchor, she still enjoys logging time in the sky. In her years as a reporter at WBAL, one of her favorite stories was flying with the Blue Angels four years ago. “They put a GoPro on my head, and I was smiling the whole time,” she says.

But her happiest place is back at home on terra firma with Mike, her 15-year-old daughter, Olivia, her mutt Leila, and cat Kit Kat. Franciotti can most often be found in the kitchen whipping up healthy dishes, from a taco soup riff on a Weight Watcher’s recipe to lasagna. (The lasagna recipe here is calories-be-damned, but she also makes a low-fat version.) Says Franciotti, “Mike calls me ‘The Galloping Gourmet,’ because it looks like a bomb has gone off after I’ve cooked my meals.”

Lasagna

Ingredients

• 1 lb. extra-lean ground beef
• 1 large onion, diced
• 4 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 2 cans stewed tomatoes
• 1 32-oz. jar spaghetti sauce (whatever is on sale)
• 16-oz. part-skim ricotta cheese
• 2 tbsp. oregano
• 1 cup light Parmesan cheese
• 3 cups shredded low-fat mozzarella cheese
• 6 lasagna noodles

Directions

In a large pan, add ground beef and drain. Add onions, garlic, drained stewed tomatoes, and sauce. Cook together for 20 minutes on low-medium heat. In separate bowl, mix together ricotta, Parmesan cheese, and oregano. In a 9×13 pan, begin layering. Start with sauce on bottom and top with three noodles. You do not need to cook noodles first. On top of noodles spread a thin layer of the ricotta mixture. Cover with layer of meat sauce and top with covering of mozzarella cheese. Add remaining three noodles. On top of noodles, spread a layer of the ricotta mixture. Cover with layer of meat sauce and top with covering of mozzarella cheese.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 425 F for 45 minutes. Uncover and bake for 10 more minutes or until cheese on top is brown and bubbly. Remove from oven and let sit for at least 10 minutes before cutting into eight pieces. Serves 8-10.

Franciotti’s “Chiapparelli’s Salad”

Ingredients

• 1 head iceberg lettuce
• 2 tbsp. of oregano
• 4 cloves of crushed garlic
• 1 cup light Parmesan cheese
• 1 small can sliced black olives
• 1 tbsp. crushed red pepper
• 1/2 cup of extra-virgin olive oil
• 4 tbsp. of red wine vinegar

Directions

Chop head of lettuce and place in a bowl. Add oregano, crushed garlic, Parmesan cheese, black olives, and crushed red pepper. Top with olive oil and red wine vinegar. Mix well. Serves 4.

Taco Soup

Ingredients

• 1 lb. of extra-lean ground beef or extra-lean ground turkey
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 cloves crushed garlic
• Two cans of stewed or diced tomatoes
• 1 can of black beans
• 1 can of kidney beans
• 1 can of cannellini beans
• 1 can of corn
• 1 packet of taco seasoning
• 1 packet of powdered ranch dressing
• 2 tablespoons of chili powder

Directions

In a large soup pot, add ground beef or turkey and drain. Add together all other ingredients and mix well. Bring to a boil and turn back heat. Let simmer for about 30 minutes. Sour cream and cheddar cheese optional when serving. Serves 4-6.

By the time this issue hits stands and goes online, you’ll be retired from WBAL-TV. After 22 years at the station, how are you feeling about the transition into retirement?
It will be a big change for me, and I haven’t worked out exactly how that’s going to be or what I’ll be doing next. I know I’m going to be putting together a lifestyle website about travel, decor, and food. I wanted more time to do what I want to do, which is travel and spend time with my grandchildren. It will be something different, but everyone tells me I’m going to love it, and I intend to do so! 

How did you get into broadcast journalism?
I got my start on television in Birmingham, Alabama, which is where I grew up and went to school. I had done some modeling, and there was a live morning talk show that had an opening for a co-host/on-air sidekick position. I auditioned for the position and didn’t get it, but I started working at the station and filling in for the co-host when she was on vacation. When she left the station—I was in my late 20s at the time—I got the job and that’s how I fell into broadcast. 

You joined the WBAL-TV news team in 1995. What was that first year like?
Honestly, the first year was pretty terrifying for me because I had never done that type of daily coverage before. The reports had to be short and quick, almost shrink-wrapped. . . . The 5 p.m. show is always the newscast that takes the brunt of anything that’s going on during the day, changewise, so it was always like riding a bucking bronco and it still can be today. Sometimes it’s very tame, it’s just a newscast, no big deal. But then something will happen and all hell will break loose. 

Once you got past the terrified phase, did you see news anchoring as something you wanted to continue for the rest of your career?
I don’t know that I did. See, I know everyone seems to think that there’s going to be a light that dawns on yonder rock and you suddenly have this clear idea of what you want to do with your life, but that light never really dawned for me. I happened to be good at what I did, by the grace of God, and it propelled me forward in my career. It wasn’t that I ever had this gigantic plan to do this or that. Things just found me and I kept doing them well. 

That’s interesting because I feel like younger generations have the notion that you have to have your career planned out years in advance.
Exactly. Everyone is asking themselves, what do I want to do with my life? I think that’s the hardest thing to do. There’s too much pressure. Wait, how old are you?

I’m 22.
Oh my god! Well when you’re 22, I can only imagine how life yawns before you in this series of big question marks. What am I supposed to be doing? What am I good at? Should I have some five- or ten-year plan? I wish I could tell people those answers from this part of my life, but I don’t have any. I think most people find something that they’re pretty good at and run on that stream.

Can you relate to that feeling with your career?
Television just worked for me. I liked that it was something different everyday and I wasn’t stuck in a cubicle. It was sometimes exciting, sometimes boring, sometimes terrifying, but it was always something I could do and so I did it. I like the performance aspect of doing the broadcasts because you know when you nail a read. And then, other times, not so much.

And if the newscast doesn’t go well, you get to try it again during the next show.
Yes! That’s what I like about news—Nothing hangs over from day to day. You finish the newscast, and it may have been really good or it may have been a total disaster, but either way it’s over. There’s always another chance to do a perfect show, which will never happen of course, but every single show is a fresh slate. 

Over the past few years, local television news viewership has declined as more people get their information through other mediums such as the internet and social media. What do you think local news will look like in 10 years?
Well, part of the problem is that no one really knows where TV news is headed. There are a lot of people who believe that its heydey is over, which is probably true. I don’t think younger people are watching TV news; they get their news in other ways, and that will continue to be a challenge. But local news does have a particular product to offer that no one else does. If you want to know what’s going on in your own city or state, then you’ll probably have to watch a local newscast, because national affiliates are only going to cover our news if something huge happens . . . I think all TV newscasts, whether it’s local or national, face the same kinds of issues. The big question is: How are people going to get their news in the future? I just don’t know. 

As a news anchor, how did you combat the public’s growing distrust of the media?
We just keep on doing real news. I don’t know how you combat the thought that people create fake news, because I genuinely and truly believe that most people in this business really strive to do their best work and put the most honest, unbiased story out there that they can. That’s why I think this whole fake news business is fake. It’s fake itself, and it’s sad that it throws doubt in people’s minds. It’s dangerous—the press is the force that stands between the American public and people who would like to do things under the cover of darkness. Without the press, how would you know what people in high places are doing? You wouldn’t. 

What was your reaction to the Sinclair Broadcasting controversy, where the media company faced scrutiny for forcing its news anchors to record a promotional message about “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country”?
I was horrified for the people who had to do it. . . . I think that was a really bad position to be put in and I felt for them. In reality, that’s a very difficult decision to make as an anchor. You might have a family to raise and bills to pay, and now your job is potentially hanging over this decision. It’s very easy to say you wouldn’t do it, but that’s very difficult to do. What would I have done? I honestly don’t know. I like to think I would not have done it but I don’t know. 

One last thing: You requested to appear in this feature without makeup or retouching. What motivated that decision?
When I think about all the thousands of newscasts, photoshoots, and appearances, I’ve done over the course of my career, of which makeup has always been a key part, I just thought, wouldn’t [the photo] be more interesting without it? . . . I suppose I’ve been in the business my whole life full of artifice and I wouldn’t mind being the under-the-artifice me. I may live to regret that dreadfully.