Donna Rossi has been a fixture on TV news in Arizona for three decades. She’s worked in Flagstaff, Tucson and in Phoenix at CBS5, and has covered every major story in our state in that time.
And, last week, she announced her retirement. The Show’s Lauren Gilger sat down with her to talk about her time in the business and how she’s seen it change over the years.
She said she doesn’t know what she’s going to do next. She told me it was just time for a change.
Rossi has been on Arizona television for 30 years, but she actually started her career as a Phoenix police officer in the south Phoenix precinct — one of the city’s bloodiest.
She left the force after four years and went back to college to get a degree in broadcast journalism expecting to go to law school afterward. But, as she told me, a chance encounter landed her on air in Flagstaff, and she was hooked on reporting the news business.