Jim Mertens

Award-winning news anchor joined the KCRG-TV9 News team in May 2022 after 27 years of covering eastern Iowa and western Illinois from the Quad Cities. Jim co-anchors KCRG-TV9 News First at Four and the KCRG-TV9 News at 6 and 10 with Beth Malicki.

Jim started his love of broadcast journalism when he was a high school newspaper editor and local radio announcer in Fond du Lac Wisconsin. From there he went to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and started working at WAXX/WAYY Radio as a news reporter and anchor. He would then work as an anchor, reporter, and producer at WEAU-TV in Eau Claire before moving to its sister station, WWMT in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

In 1995 he joined the team at WQAD-TV in the Quad Cities where he was an anchor, reporter, and public affairs host. Jim has covered the Iowa Caucuses, the floods of 1993 and 2008, and the derecho that tore across Iowa in August 2020.

Jim has a lifeline that runs through Cedar Rapids. US 151 goes straight through his hometown and ends in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, where his mother and father were born, raised, and married. His father was a die-hard Cubs fan - though Jim mostly roots for the Brewers - and is also a fan of the Green Bay Packers, of course.

Jim is a Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association board member and a past president of the Iowa Broadcast News Association and the Northwest Broadcast News Association.