Iowa TV reporter comes out as trans during news broadcast

A television reporter in Des Moines, Iowa shared her true self with viewers this week.

“My name is Nora JS Reichart and I am a transgender woman living in Des Moines and working for WOI Local 5,” she said Tuesday during the station’s 6 p.m. broadcast.

Reichardt, who joined WOI-TV in July 2021 — under a different name and presenting herself as a male — said that she wondered if she would ever be able to be completely open about who she really is.

“For a long time, I didn’t think I would get to say that — at least not on air like this,” she said after a brief introduction by fellow newscaster Stephanie Angleson, who told viewers about the “very special day” as the station, an ABC affiliate, welcomed back “a friend and colleague.”

“I didn’t know if there was a place and a space for me to do this sort of work that I’ve really come to love and enjoy, while also getting to be myself while I do it,” Reichardt said.

The 24-year-old Drake University graduate said that she began questioning her identity back in high school. But since she grew up in a “pretty rural area” in Minnesota, she “didn’t even have the language to describe what I was feeling.”

In an interview with a former WOI-TV colleague, she spoke about that time, saying that it was “hard to place that sense of wrongness” and that made her feel like she was a “person who’s wearing my body and not a person who’s living in it.”

That feeling made her depressed and anxious for “almost as long as I can remember,” she added.

There were times when a day at work felt like “a dress-up day,” she said, noting that she was “telling all my coworkers and the people I was meeting out in the field that I was someone I didn’t really feel like.”

Reichardt said that she is “very fortunate” for receiving support from her coworkers and her family and her colleagues have been supportive of her decision.

“Today [is a] really big day for me,” she said during the interview. “I’m officially filing the paperwork to legally change my name in the state of Iowa.”

In August, another reporter decided to share his true self with the world.

Sports journalist M.A. Voepel, who joined ESPN.com more than 25 years ago, shared on Twitter that he’s transgender and that his pronouns are he/him.