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Champlin Park graduate, Hannah Flood, brightens up mornings as part of Fox 9 news team 

(05/01/22) Hannah Flood, a 2011 Champlin Park High School (CPHS) graduate and current Fox 9 news reporter, came out of high school with her curiosity ablaze. She had been a creative child, in love with writing and making videos on her parents’ camcorder. Her time in a high school class, “Rebel Report,” helped her realize she could chart a career path with activities she naturally enjoyed.  

“In high school, all the school projects I did incorporated video,” she said. “That’s where it started. When I realized you could combine the two, that was really exciting.” 

Then taught by Christopher Baker-Raivo, the Rebel Report class produces a daily news show. Flood said Baker-Raivo challenged students to try new editing techniques and create goofy, fun videos set to music. Baker-Raivo could see her excitement and enthusiasm for the class and would often choose Flood to direct if he lacked a volunteer. Flood said she took the class a few times because she enjoyed it so much, and at one point Baker-Raivo challenged her to produce her own news story. That story, which featured the school’s food shelf, opened her eyes to challenges around her that she hadn’t noticed before. While the teenage Flood originally thought the resource mostly gave out snacks to students who were hungry during the school day, she soon understood the true food insecurity taking place right under her nose. 

“It made me curious and want to ask questions and explore more than just my bubble,” she said. 

After graduating from the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Flood hopped across the border to take a morning news anchor position for the NBC affiliate in Madison, Wisconsin. She’s now back to her Minnesota roots, reporting for the Fox 9 news morning team for nearly three years. Some of her favorite stories to cover include outdoors and sports-related news, election-night coverage (“It’s just electric,” she said), and stories that allow her to get into other peoples’ worlds that are totally different than her own. For example, when working in Madison, Flood said she particularly enjoyed dairy farm-related stories because farm life differs so much from her typical experiences. 

A large part of that desire to immerse herself in different perspectives comes from her time at CPHS, she said. 

“Something that was really impactful in my life was going to a school that was so big and so filled with all kinds of people with different backgrounds,” she said. “You could never possibly get to know every person in the school, and that sparked a natural curiosity in me about people and people’s stories. It was one way that Champlin Park and Anoka-Hennepin had a big impact on me and where I ended up.” 

For today’s Anoka-Hennepin students interested in a similar career path, Flood encouraged teens to use the technology available at their fingertips to “just do it.”  

“I’ve done so much that was so experimental,” she said. “Just do it to explore and find out what you really love. You have to just do it to get any good at it.”