Jadiann Thompson, a 10-year veteran at WHDH-TV (Channel 7), will take over for longtime news anchor Kim Khazei who retired last month after 20 years on the anchor desk, the station said Tuesday.
Thompson joined 7News as the weekend evening anchor and weekday reporter in June 2015. For the last nine years, she has been anchoring newscasts at 4, 4:30, 5:30, 6:30, and 9 p.m.
Thompson now will anchor newscasts at 5, 6, 10, and 11 p.m. on WHDH and at 10 p.m. on WLVI, General Manager Jimmy Rogers said in a statement. Thompson will partner with co-anchor Adam Williams.
“7NEWS at 9PM is a viewer favorite in Boston and Jadiann is an important part of that,” Rogers said in the statement. “We’re thrilled to expand her time on the anchor desk in our late-night newscasts.”
“Jadiann is a dedicated and experienced journalist,” Rogers said. “She and Adam will make an excellent team.”
In November, station officials announced Khazei’s departure, which said was made to move closer to her first grandchild. She first joined the station in 1994, stepped away in 2001 to help raise her three children, and then returned in 2007.
Khazei was one of the first members of the Channel 7 news team, after Ed Ansin’s Sunbeam Television Corporation bought WHDH in 1993. The company also later bought WLVI-TV (Channel 56).
After years of broadcasting as an NBC affiliate, the network dropped its affiliation of WHDH in 2017. WHDH has since been independent, and NBC operates WBTS-CD (Channel 10), better known as NBC10 Boston.
“Jadiann helped launch our 9PM news in 2017, and it quickly became one of the highest rated newscasts in Boston,” Linda Miele, vice president of news for WHDH & WLVI, said in the company’s statement.
“It was a big early win for our station in the first weeks of going independent and years later it continues to be a market leader,” Miele said. “With this move more viewers can count on Jadiann to get them caught up as they wind down their day.”
According to Thompson’s website, she is a five time Emmy-award winner who earned a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Arkansas in 2007. After graduation, she taught English as a second language in Madrid.
Thompson’s television news career began at KTWO-TV in Casper, Wyo., and has taken her to Kansas City and Phoenix.
Thompson has devoted special focus to ALS research in tribute to her grandmother who died from the disease.
Locally, she has worked closely with The Peter Frates ALS Foundation, and she once rode a bicycle 280 miles over three days to raise money for research, the station’s statement said.
The Globe reported that Khazei is just the latest in a line of long-serving anchors in Boston to leave. Some have retired or moved onto to other careers, while others have been impacted by layoffs and cost-cutting.
Earlier this fall, Paramount laid off longtime WBZ political analyst Jon Keller as part of job cuts across the corporation that followed the parent company’s merger with Skydance. Paramount, which owns WBZ, also laid off four other employees at the CBS local station.
Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez.