Landing her role model’s role Latoyia Edwards follows Boston icon Liz Walker to the anchor desk

Landing her role model’s role
Latoyia Edwards follows Boston icon Liz Walker to the anchor desk

Dorchester native Latoyia Edwards was promoted to the marquee anchor position at NECN in January. (Suzanne Kreiter/ Globe Staff)
By Johnny Diaz
Globe Staff / March 3, 2011

When Latoyia Edwards was growing up in Dorchester, she made sure to watch Liz Walker anchor the nightly TV news.

“She looked like me,’’ Edwards recalled. “She was outgoing, and an African-American face on television.’’

It was the 1980s, and Walker, working at WBZ-TV (Channel 4), was the first black anchor of a Boston TV newscast — and one of the few in the country. Now Edwards is the only African-American on an evening news anchor team in Boston, the nation’s seventh-largest TV market. She said Walker is “one of the people who made me think that this is something that I can do. She totally inspired me to go into TV journalism.’’

FULL STORY HERE
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2011/03/03/latoyia_edwards_settles_in_as_necn_anchor/

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Professor dead in Newton blaze

Professor dead in Newton blaze

By Jessica Heslam  |   Tuesday, February 22, 2011  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Local Coverage
Photo by Ted Fitzgerald

A former award-winning WGBH producer and beloved Bunker Hill Community College professor battling brain cancer perished in a fire early yesterday at her Newton home, her grieving family said.

Beth Deare, a 63-year-old grandmother of three, had survived throat cancer but was recently diagnosed with brain cancer, said family friend Ronald Mitchell of Roxbury.

Deare, a former producer for the public affairs TV program “Say Brother,” now “Basic Black” on WGBH, was undergoing weekly cancer treatments and was on leave from the college, Mitchell said.

In a statement, Deare’s brother and sister said they were devastated.

“We take comfort in knowing that the cancer she fought will no longer consume her and that her vast family and extended family — including students, and friends around the world — will keep her in love and prayer,” the siblings said.

The family said Deare’s “life was full with incredible highs, ranging from her loving daughter and three grandchildren to her many awards and accolades for her acclaimed work in television and film, including 13 Emmys and a Peabody.”

Deare had worked as a producer on “Say Brother” in the 1980s, said WGBH spokeswoman Jeanne Hopkins. “We’re very saddened. It’s such a loss. She really was a very talented producer,” Hopkins said.

In a statement, Bunker Hill spokeswoman Colleen Roach said the entire college was mourning Deare’s tragic death.

“She had worked for more than 15 years in the College’s English Department and was a very passionate and engaging professor who was greatly admired by her students,’’ the statement said.

Deare’s producer credits also include “Midnight Ramble,” a film about the history of black filmmaking, said Mitchell, who said Deare also worked as a host on “Say Brother.”

Fire Marshal Stephen Coan told the Herald the cause of the Waverly Avenue blaze is still under investigation.

Colneth Smiley Jr. contributed to this report.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1318483

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Roxbury’s Patrice O’Neal goes from heckler to comedy star

By Megan Johnson
Friday, October 8, 2010

Boston stand-up guy Patrice O’Neal knows firsthand that sometimes hecklers can do better than the comic bombing on stage.

And that’s because O’Neal, who hails from Roxbury, was that annoying guy sitting at Boston’s long-defunct comedy club Estelle’s a few years ago!

One night, Patrice, who had given up a football scholarship at Northeastern University for a degree in theater arts, was being a big mouth in the audience when the unfunny comic invited him on stage.

“I just got on stage,” O’Neal told the Track. “I was heckling - being the audience member I can’t stand now. I thought I was funnier than any comic I saw.”

Well, he was that night, and it started his career touring the major clubs in the northeast.

Beats selling sausage subs at the Ruggles MBTA station, peanuts and popcorn at the old Boston Garden and working the door at the Comedy Connection!

Now famous for his standup specials on HBO, Showtime and Comedy Central, Patrice is looking to branch out into film and TV.

He’s already gotten a taste of prime-time success on NBC’s “The Office” as one of the Dunder-Mifflin warehouse workers. But there’s no limit to his ambitions for the future.

“I want to be as close to the top as possible, but in my own world. Top of the food chain,” said O’Neal, who headlines “Comix at Foxwoods” tonight and tomorrow.

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