About

ABOUT

Naomi Kowles is an investigative reporter with the WBTV investigative team in Charlotte.

From 2020-2023, Naomi was the chief investigator and Sunday morning public affairs host at WISC-TV in Madison, Wis., focusing on in-depth reports in public affairs, criminal justice and politics. Her work contributed to the station’s national Murrow award for overall excellence from the Radio Television Digital News Association—one of the industry’s most prestigious awards. In 2022, she won a regional RTDNA Murrow investigative award for a series uncovering how hate crime penalties are frequently misapplied or never used at all in Wisconsin.

From December 2022 through late 2023, she also led the WISC-TV newsroom in all daily news and special projects as the station searched for a full-time news director and assistant news director.

Since her broadcast career started in 2019, she’s won nearly two dozen first place and other awards in investigative and hard news categories from the Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association and Wisconsin Broadcasters Association.

As WISC-TV’s senior and investigative reporter, Naomi covers the market and state’s top stories and interviews the area’s biggest newsmakers every Sunday morning on For the Record. Highlights:

  • Helps train and mentor general assignment reporters and interns in daily hard news practices

  • Leads investigative team in crafting in-depth and special report coverage for the station, as well as helping guide investigative and document-based follow-ups to breaking news and top stories

  • Books, writes, hosts, produces and edits For the Record weekly

  • Helps guide special report coverage for the station: That includes producing and leading coverage for this year’s hour-long political election specials on CBS programming in the Madison market, where the midterm elections are receiving national attention as some of the most pivotal in the country

  • Used storytelling to help station write and launch a new policy modeled after a growing movement to allow people to remove their names from old, minor crime stories online

In her first market, Naomi started in TV as a producer before breaking into investigative reporting at WSAW in central Wisconsin. While there, her long-form reporting on child sexual assault, the impact of drugs on the foster care system, and a range of other investigations won multiple awards. Her reporting on criminal behavior in Ringle was featured in some of the largest TV markets in the country as well as on CNN and CBS networks. A months-long investigation at the beginning of 2020 uncovered how Frontier Communications was allowing the elderly and medically-at-risk to live for weeks without a way to call 911 or use their medical alert systems in the wake of service outages, resulting in action from Wisconsin’s senators and company policy changes.

Originally from the Hudson Valley in New York State and majoring in International Studies, Naomi taught English in Mongolia following graduation for more than a year, and her travels have taken her to South Africa, Russia and other countries before returning to the states in 2017.