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Monica Garcia, weekend morning anchor at Arizona’s Family and a reporter for “Good Morning Arizona,” has left the Phoenix TV stations.
Tuesday was her last day,
Garcia announced in an Instagram post.
“There’s going to be one less Amigo on Good Morning Arizona,” she posted. “Today is my last day on GMAZ!!!”
Garcia is the latest in
a string of departures for Arizona’s Family, comprised of Channels 3 and 5, both owned by Atlanta-based Gray Television.
Javier Soto, the popular co-anchor of “Good Morning Arizona,” announced his departure in May. Other changes include
the firing of Kris Pickel in April and the departure of
popular anchor Brandon Lee in 2021 after he had returned to the stations following a previous exit, among others.
“I would say the (news) industry is like an intimate relationship,” Garcia, who came to the stations in 2019, told The Arizona Republic. “You give it all, but it doesn’t give the same back, and then you realize you’re not getting back what you’re giving. … I’m at the point in my life where I no longer need this relationship to define me. As a natural storyteller, I’ve decided to turn the page.”
The advantages of TV were no longer worth it, Garcia said.
“Sure the exposure is there, but there comes a time when a lot of us are ready to come into financial compensation for the hard work we do,” she said. “That’s sometimes not there. You feel like a cog in a wheel, basically.”
Plus, she said, she'll get to sleep later.
Garcia said she will be working for a local public-relations firm, Highnoon marketing in Tempe, using skills she developed over the past few years.
“During the pandemic and during the last three years, my beat was economy-related stories,” she said. “When I talked to, I would say, hundreds of local business owners, I could feel it deep in my soul when I heard about their hardships.”
She started posting videos about these business owners on her personal social media accounts, Garcia said. “It started out as a creative outlet on days when it seemed like all I was covering was some pretty heavy breaking news,” she said. “What I saw was an opportunity to take these two-and-a-half minute packages and turn them into 15 second videos.”
Some of
her TikTok videos have been viewed more than 1 million times; one has more than 2.4 million.
Others evidently saw the opportunity, as well.
“I was noticed by a PR company in town,” she said. “So it’s kind of like 'hey kids, more internet time on your phone is not a bad thing.'”
Yet, as a Mexican-American woman, she’ll miss journalism, Garcia said.
“The sadness that I felt were for the people that were in my inbox looking for more diversity in the news,” she said, “because it’s one less person.”
