Viewers turn to Denise Koch when they want credible news reports presented by one of the most veteran news reporters and anchors in Baltimore.
The Emmy Award-winning journalist has traveled to China, West Africa, and Jamaica to report the news. She’s also covered the homefront from around the United States and from every corner of our state, bringing local, national, and world events into sharp focus for WJZ viewers.
Even sports fans went with Koch as she covered Baltimore’s search for an NFL team in Chicago to the Ravens’ quest for the Super Bowl trophy in Tampa.
Koch’s introduction to WJZ viewers was on “Evening Magazine,” where she was known as “Daring Denise,” tackling sports from hang gliding to scuba.
She joined the newsroom as a lifestyle reporter, reviewing plays and films and filing stories twice a day on the arts and creative side of life.
For a number of years, viewers were given an intimate portrait of fascinating Marylanders on her interview program “Get to Know.”
She followed struggling high school students for four years as they participated in the “Futures” program. That series earned her a Maryland State Teachers Award and a National Angels Award. And she traveled with high school students to Senegal to discover the roots of slavery. That series was later shown at museums and the National Post Office in the nation’s capital.
Koch has garnered a host of awards in addition to her Emmy. Her reporting has been nominated for Emmys six times. The Society of Professional Journalists awarded her a prize for her documentary on Baltimore teachers in China, “Baltimore East.”
Koch, a California native, attended UCLA, where she earned the prestigious Natalie Wood Award for her talents. She graduated from California Institute of the Arts and then received her master’s degree from the University of Michigan.
Her acting career took her to theaters around the country and even to the soap opera “Another World,” eventually bringing her to Center Stage, where she also served as literary manager. She has taught at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; University of Michigan; and University of Wisconsin.
For more than two decades, Koch has been on WJZ’s anchor desk, earning a reputation as one of the most respected broadcast journalists in town and one of the most versatile.
Her work in the community is very important to her. She’s been on the advisory boards of the Hospice Network of Maryland, Success in Style (clothing women re-entering the workforce), and the Maryland Committee for the Children.
She’s also a founding member of the Women’s Leadership Institute of Baltimore, a panel of women dedicated to working for gender equity.
For 10 years, she was a member of the Howard County Arts Council and is currently a board member of the United Way of Central Maryland as well as a member of its women’s leadership council.
Koch and her husband live in Owings Mills.