Long Island native Michelle Mackonochie is working her way up in the TV news business.

She started in market 208th at WBKB  (Alpena, MI) and then jumped to WMDT (Salisbury, MD) in market 143. 

Now she has almost cracked the top 50, landing a gig at WINK in Ft. Myers as the station's newest morning Anchor. 

“My first week was awesome and really eye-opening because it is a lot bigger than where I came from. It’s incredible how much news they cover down here and with the amount of reporters that they have, they’re able to get somebody in every story. We have so many people going live throughout the show,” Mackonochie said. “It’s much different than 47ABC (WMDT). It’s a much bigger challenge and exactly what I was looking for. I was ready for that next step.”

“I was only [in Alpena] for five months and then I threw together a reel around Christmastime, put it up, came back after Christmas break and my [future] boss in Salisbury, which is in Maryland, reached out to me to see if I was looking for a job. I wasn’t, but after five months in Market Number 208 you kind of get the groove of things,” she recalled. “It was a really tiny town with not that much to do and I think I wanted a bigger challenge. So that was Salisbury for me. Three weeks later, I was finding my way around Maryland. I wound up staying there my entire three-year contract. I was the weekend anchor and a reporter three days a week for two years and then my last year, the morning anchor left and my boss thought that was a good opportunity to throw me on the morning show.”

Now she has landed a gig in Ft. Myers doing the morning show and she wants the kids to know back on Long Island that you to can land a gig on TV.  

"I want them to know that I did it and I’m an ordinary girl from Long Island. It’s something they can do too.”