Marella Porter

Marella Porter joined the Local 12 team in July 2021. She reports during the week and anchors on the weekend, two roles she loves wholeheartedly.

From the beginning, Marella knew she wanted to be a storyteller. Growing up in Central Florida, power outages often meant showtime for her family during hurricanes, as young Marella would “report” on the weather, with flashlights as her spotlights, in their living room.

Marella graduated from the University of South Florida, where she studied Mass Communications and International Studies.

She started her journalism career in Casper, Wyoming at KCWY. While living in the least populous state in America, what lacked in population was made up for in the breathtaking beauty of the Mountain West. Marella quickly learned the true meaning of wind chill during her first Wyoming snow at the end of May. She moved to Casper at the perfect time. In 2017 it was in the path of totality for the Total Solar Eclipse. She got to cover the once-in-a-lifetime moment as millions of people flocked to Wyoming from all over the world to see the city and the state go dark!

Marella comes to Cincinnati from the birthplace of Mardi Gras: Mobile, Alabama. During her time in the Deep South, she covered the most active hurricane season on record, many of the storms gunning for the Gulf Coast in 2020. While at WALA she also covered the pandemic’s historic halt of carnival season, shutting down parades in the Port City for the first time since the 1940s.

One of the most memorable moments for her was seeing the late Congressman John Lewis’ life come full circle. Just hours after his casket was carried by horse-drawn carriage over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of “Bloody Sunday,” she had the honor of reporting from Montgomery where hundreds of people gathered to pay their respects to the civil rights icon as his casket lay in the Alabama State Capitol before being taken to Washington, D.C., making Lewis the first Black lawmaker to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

Marella is excited to learn all she can about the Tri-State, sharing what matters to the community and making memories that will last a lifetime.

If you must know three things about Marella it’s this: she loves to eat, is obsessed with her puppy Roary and she loves a good adventure!

If you’ve got a story idea, don’t be shy! You can send them to msporter@sbgtv.com, and feel free to throw in your favorite restaurant recommendation or activity!