KDKA-TV general manager Chris Pike announced Friday that acting news director Anne Linaberger will become news director, effective immediately.

Ms. Linaberger, a Penn Hills native, previously worked as the station's assistant news director. She replaces Coleen Marren, who departed in April after nine months on the job for a position near her hometown in Connecticut.

Ms. Linaberger said she plans no immediate changes that would be noticeable to viewers. One of her first priorities will be to hire a new assistant news director.

A graduate of Allegheny College, Ms. Linaberger began her professional career working in radio as a news anchor for Sheridan Broadcasting's WAMO. Five years later she took a pay cut for an on-air television position at WDTV in Clarksburg, W.Va., where she reported, produced and anchored newscasts. She left as 11 p.m. anchor to work at WTAE-AM and soon found herself reporting for WTAE-TV, too, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before moving into management as an executive producer there.

Her last on-air appearance was the night in 1994 when USAir Flight 427 crashed on approach to Pittsburgh International Airport.

"When the plane crashed, all the anchors were out to dinner," she recalled, "so we looked around the newsroom to see who had ever been on the air before. I started reporting until the anchors got back."

Ms. Linaberger left WTAE in 1998 as executive producer of special projects, a title she carried with her to KDKA. After her promotion to assistant news director about five years ago, she also produced sweeps stories for a time, including during the 2006 incident in which a Marty Griffin report on a church pastor's behavior, promoted as scandalous, never aired due to the pastor's suicide.

"Certainly you're never the same as a journalist when something like that happens," Ms. Linaberger said. "Certainly it has affected the way that I work as a journalist."

Because she is from Pittsburgh and has no intention of leaving, taking on the top newsroom job comes with added risk.

"I'm certainly much more vulnerable in a news director position," she acknowledged. "I have great confidence in my staff to do the excellent job they've already done. We've shown ratings success and it's my goal to continue that."

Ms. Linaberger, 47, took herself out of the running last year when the news director position was open before Ms. Marren was hired.

"I have a 10-year-old who is active in sports, and I was concerned I wouldn't be able to be what I want to be in my role as his mother," she said. "I've now done the job over the course of being interim news director for a year-and-a-half, and I just felt as if I could do it and balance it with my personal life."

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