Congratulations to CBK Media Management client Nadeen Yanes on joining WFTS-TV (ABC) in Tampa, FL as a News Anchor/Reporter. Nadeen previously worked at WFTX-TV (FOX) in Fort Myers, FL as the Weekday Evening Co-Anchor (5 PM/6 PM/10 PM/11 PM).
While Nadeen was in Fort Myers, Hurricane Ian hit the viewing area in September 2022. Nadeen was on the anchor desk live for hours at a time, completely unscripted, helping Southwest Florida residents through the deadliest hurricane to strike the state of Florida. One of the hardest counties hit in the state was Lee County, which is in the Fort Myers market. One hundred forty-nine people in Florida died from Hurricane Ian, with 72 deaths being in Lee County. Nadeen knew that number was high and she wanted answers as to why more residents weren’t able to escape Hurricane Ian before it made landfall. Nadeen spent the next seven months investigating Lee County’s Hurricane evacuation plan. What she uncovered was startling. Lee County leaders did not follow their own plan and procedures when deciding the exact moment to issue the Hurricane Ian evacuation order. Two weeks after Nadeen‘s investigative story aired, the Lee County Manager in charge of the evacuation plan announced he was retiring effective July 31, 2023.
At WFTX, Nadeen led EDI initiatives both inside and outside of her newsroom, celebrating diversity among staff and through storytelling within the community. She also emceed several events and spent most of 2023 volunteering at Golisano’s Children’s Hospital in Fort Myers.
Before making the move to Fort Myers, Nadeen spent the previous six years as a News Reporter/Fill-In Anchor at WKMG-TV, the CBS affiliate in Orlando, FL. Nadeen is an award-winning journalist who won an Edward R. Murrow Award for News Series on “Boomtown”. Boomtown is an initiative Nadeen took on in January of 2020. It’s now turned into a franchise at WKMG focusing on Central Florida’s population boom with 1,500 people moving to the area each week. A story part of this news series featuring a single mom’s trek taking a 7-hour round trip ride to work on public transportation, won first place for traffic reporting at the 2020 Florida Associated Press Awards. In 2016, Nadeen was on the anchor desk the morning of the Pulse Nightclub mass shooting in downtown Orlando. She anchored the first several hours of wall-to-wall coverage solo and then spent the next two weeks straight outside of the nightclub leading coverage of the shooting. This story came full circle two years later as Nadeen covered the federal trial against the Pulse gunman’s wife who was acquitted in 2018. Nadeen‘s work in the Sunshine State has earned her multiple Florida Associated Press Awards.
Prior to Orlando, Nadeen‘s television career began at WMBB-TV in Panama City, FL. She then made her way north to WRIC-TV in Richmond, VA where she spent two years as a Morning Reporter/Fill-In Anchor. Nadeen then worked the next two years in Norfolk, VA as a News Reporter/Fill-In anchor at WTKR-TV. An Orlando native, Nadeen graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in Telecommunications (News). Nadeen is a proud member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. When Nadeen isn’t working, she enjoys spoiling her Yorkie Lola and cat Leila (AKA Kitty) and tending to her nearly 50 house plants. #TeamCBK