Chicago midday anchor leaving

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Julie Unruh, the midday anchor at Nexstar’s WGN in Chicago, is leaving the station Nov. 24, 2021, Robert Feder reports.

She’s been with WGN since 2001.

Prior to that she was at CLTV, the then-Tribune owned 24 hour regional cable news network serving Chicagoland that operated out of the same newsroom and building as WGN.

The station has yet to announce who will replace her on its midday newscasts, which are currently co-anchored by Dina Bair.

Since taking over WGN and the former WGN America channel, Nexstar has invested millions in launching national newscasts from a dedicated newsroom and two studios in the same building as WGN’s local news studios and newsroom.

WGN America was then rebranded as NewsNation and expanded its news and commentary programming, though it still airs a variety of reruns of popular shows during much of its dayside schedule.

Along with that came a flurry of hires at the station who started working out of that new newsroom — but over the course of the next year, multiple people had left, both on camera and behind the scenes.

This included the VP of the project and longtime WGN veteran Jennifer Lyons, who would eventually land across town at WBBM. The managing editor and news director also quit, as did anchor Rob Nelson and meteorologist Albert Ramon.

Insiders said many of these departures were connected to the right leaning editorial direction the network was taking as well as dismal ratings.