TALIA KIRKLAND WORKED AT WPXI-TV FOR FOUR YEARS.
Penn Hills native now works in Las Vegas
by Naomi C. Ilochi
For New Pittsburgh Courier
Talia Kirkland is a multi-media reporter, wife, daughter and community advocate, shaped by her family, friends, hometown and life journey.
Kirkland is a Penn Hills native, Penn Hills High School graduate (2010) and Duquesne University alumna with a degree in journalism and a Master of Science in Media Technology and Arts. She’s also a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), and a 2024 member of the New Pittsburgh Courier’s Fab 40 class.
Journalism visited Kirkland as a teenager at Penn Hills High School through the representation of her first Black teacher, whom she calls Ms. Livingston. Ms. Livingston was Kirkland’s creative writing teacher, and at the time, Kirkland wanted to be a poet. But Kirkland was advised to look into journalism.
“From there it kept going, we started the school’s newspaper,” Kirkland recalled in an interview with the Courier. “And I think had I not had that teacher, I would have still found journalism, but I don’t know if it would have been so early on.”
At Duquesne University, she was taught the importance of “editorial integrity.”
“That is something that has really carried me through my career. I don’t put my name on something that I’m not proud of,” Kirkland said. “I think Duquesne really just drilled that in. They also drilled into you, you have to practice, you have to do this. You have to continuously write and practice and hone your craft. So I really appreciated my professors there.”
While Kirkland’s professors and newfound village taught her the importance of integrity and ethics, they also taught her the power of community and service that would go on to help her along her professional journey.
They (her professors) “helped me get my first journalism job out of school. I wasn’t finding a job in the field. I was fortunate enough to get an internship with UPMC, which was phenomenal,” Kirkland said. “We were making commercials, and I had mentors from that, but I knew I wanted to be a reporter. And a professor was like, ‘Hey, we are doing a missionary trip in Virginia. We want it transcribed, we want interviews, we want to put together a mini documentary.’ I had already graduated. He didn’t have to think of me. But that’s how close-knit Duquesne is. And that’s how much they pour into their students.”
Chances are, you’ve seen Kirkland on WPXI-TV (Channel 11) in the past three and a half years. She eventually landed that hometown reporter position in January 2022, but it wasn’t before she experienced the dichotomy of resilience and transition.
“I worked in West Virginia and I knew that wasn’t for me,” Kirkland said. “And then I went to Philly and I worked for Fox News. They had a reporter program, a small program where they only take five cohorts and they place you in random cities across the United States and you shoot, write and turn your own stories…By the time I got to WPXI in 2022, I knew it was time to come home.”
Michele Newell, a Black woman from Homestead who worked at WPXI from 2017 until October 2021, left the station to work for WSB-TV in Atlanta.
Kirkland then emailed the news director of WPXI, her attempt of “shooting her shot” by saying, “I see that you’re losing a reporter that’s homegrown. I know that she does a lot of community-based stories. I’m also from Pittsburgh.”
Scott Trabandt, the WPXI news director, announced the hiring of Kirkland just a few months after Newell left. “There have been Black women at that station that had kind of laid the footwork, so they knew how important it was to make sure that that position wasn’t just filled by anyone,” Kirkland said of her hiring at WPXI.
Kirkland enjoyed working at WPXI, while acknowledging it did pose its challenges. “It wasn’t like coming home and getting to cover everything that is Black and brown, and everything that is positive and good, because that’s not news, unfortunately,” Kirkland told the Courier. “The year I came (2022), we had a very high rate of homicides and teen violence. And it was very, very challenging.”
In 2022, 71 homicides were recorded in the City of Pittsburgh. The homicides have since decreased in the last three years.
One of Kirkland’s most memorable stories she covered while at WPXI was then-state Rep. Summer Lee winning the seat for U.S. Congress in Pennsylvania’s 12th District in 2022. These days, Congresswoman Lee is deep into her second term.
“I can remember what I had on. I can remember the moment. I can remember her face. Those experiences definitely, I would say, were impactful,” Kirkland said.
She covered a plethora of stories over the past three and a half years, such as a story in February 2025 where residents, who were forced out of their residences in East Hills due to a fire, came back to their apartments only to see some of their items were stolen. She reported on the May 2025 Primary Election, when Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey lost the Democratic nomination to now Mayor-elect Corey O’Connor. She was on the South Side with Mayor Gainey on that night, May 20, when Mayor Gainey gave an emotional 10-minute speech to his supporters while conceding to O’Connor.
Behind the scenes, Kirkland’s husband, Taylor Paolino, secured an executive position in the growing city of Las Vegas, and Kirkland then secured a reporter/anchor position in Vegas, too, with Fox 5 (KVVU-TV). Kirkland began working at Fox 5 on Oct. 20, 2025.
Kirkland deemed her experience as a Black journalist in Pittsburgh rewarding but difficult. “I think, having a Black woman be able to tell Black stories is important, but it also weighs heavy, and the critiques are high.”
Kirkland doesn’t have any regrets about her journey and experiences, but in some aspects she experienced guilt. “I started to feel guilt because representation is so big for me, and this is my hometown, and I didn’t do every story that I wanted to do. But again, I think that this was just the right timing, the right space, and this is such a pivotal moment in my journey.”
As Kirkland reflected on her three and a half years on Pittsburgh television, she thought about her large bank of supporters who watched her and cheered her on. People like her husband, her mother (Debra Kirkland), father (Anthony Kirkland), big sisters Jada Kirkland and Tamera Carter, best friends Alexis Johnson and Courtney Johnson. The women in her sorority, her former co-workers at UPMC, her professors from Duquesne.
“I literally love my village and every person has played such an important role, big or small,” Kirkland told the Courier.
Except for her husband, the rest of her village will have to watch Kirkland from afar, but thanks to the internet, a quick visit to fox5vegas.com will connect them to Kirkland’s reports. For Kirkland, it’s not that she abandoned her hometown; she was walking towards a deeper calling.
“When you get a new opportunity,” Kirkland said, “sometimes it’s hard to let go and step out of that comfortability of home.”