A new face on the news

Kids usually grow up idolizing firefighters or professional athletes; few idolize the man on the 10 p.m. news. Jack Royer, however, dreamed of being a news anchor.

“I don’t know when the start date was,” Royer said, trying to remember when he first decided to become a news anchor. “I think as soon as I was old enough to know what a camera was.”

Royer grew up going to the newsroom with his dad, Mike Royer, who has been in television broadcasting for more than 40 years. When he was 10, Royer remembers going to work with his dad after dinner and staying for the 10 o’clock news. 

“Which back then was like 4 a.m. for a 10-year-old,” he said.

While his dad never pressured him to pursue the same career path, Royer found himself drawn to the news. He worked for the school news at Mountain Brook High School, produced football coverage with his family for several years and started working at WVUA 23 at 19 years old.

Even though he graduated from MBHS three years ago, Royer said he continues to feel the support from his community.

“I’m 45 minutes from home. I get home a lot and come home a lot, and the reason is I love the Mountain Brook community and miss it dearly,” he said. “I’m thankful for all the opportunity I had in Mountain Brook. … I owe so much to Mountain Brook.”

Now a junior at the University of Alabama, Royer was announced as the new co-anchor for the 10 p.m. news in October. He will co-anchor with Tamika Alexander, another Alabama native, and will be one of the youngest permanent anchors for a weeknight newscast in the history of Birmingham television, according to a release. Royer turned 21 in November. 

“As far as we can tell, that’s the youngest permanent anchor,” Royer said.

WVUA is owned by the University of Alabama and therefore relies on students to get most of the work done. While Royer used to report between three and five days a week, in his new position he will move toward anchoring five times a week and focusing on more feature stories.

Having the freedom to select and report on his own stories is one of the most exciting parts of the new promotion, Royer said. When he would shadow his dad in the newsroom, Royer said he idolized the idea of putting on a tie, being on camera and reading from the teleprompter. 

“As I’ve worked in this business and gone out to cover stories, what I value has changed,” he said. “The value to me is going to meet all the people I’m going to meet.”

Anchoring the news is an incredible opportunity, Royer said, but he is more excited to see what the station can do for West Alabama and its viewers.

“When you work as a journalist for long enough, you start to really realize what’s important,” he said.

During his time at WVUA, Royer said one of the most powerful stories he has worked on was a five-year anniversary piece on the 2011 tornadoes. When the tornadoes hit that April, Royer visited towns with his dad.

“I met these city leaders, met people in the community who were devastated by the storm,” he said.

This April, Royer went back to some of those places, but this time, he was the reporter.

“Here I am, five years later, standing in the new high school that’s been built, standing in the middle of a rebuilt downtown,” Royer said. “It was surreal in a way to do similar stories in Tuscaloosa, five years after I’m a kid and [went around] with my dad.”