The children started walking over to sit down once they saw Alex Whittler set up a small Bose speaker and place five books at her side. The Fox 5 Atlanta anchor was preparing for storytime at the Buckhead Library on a cool Saturday morning in February. Reading for Saturday storytimes is something she has done periodically for the past year. Whittler said it was a way to give back to children the way a local librarian did for her when she was in second grade.
“We have a lot of options today. Do you guys like Llama, Llama, Red Pajama?” Whittler asked a small group of children seated at her feet in a corner of the library’s main room as soft instrumental music played in the background.
After she read Anna Dewdney’s “Llama, Llama Red Pajama”, a popular enough selection that she always makes sure to bring it for storytime, Whitller read the four other books she brought. Each time with a level of patience a parent or elementary school teacher would appreciate.
“I feel like I’ve read this one to you before, so don’t tell them what happens,” Whittler, smiling, said to a little girl who was a part of the growing crowd of children seated on the library’s colorful carpet.
The book she was referring to was “I’m Not Scared, You’re Scared,” which was written by Late Night with Seth Myers host Seth Myers, a fellow Northwestern University alum. Whittler closed out storytime by reading one of her favorite books as a child, “Lazy Ozzie”.
Written in 1994 by author Michael Coleman and illustrated by Gwyneth Williamson, “Lazy Ozzie” was a book that Whittler’s mother used to read to her when she was a kid. Whittler thought it was appropriate to have it on hand for storytime.
Born in Chicago, the Whittler family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico when she was six years old.
“I was heartbroken. I was very sad about it, but we moved to New Mexico, and not long after that, we had my little brother,” Whittler recalled during an interview with The Atlanta Voice.
Whittler said her parents wanted to move somewhere affordable and chose the land of Enchantment for his family to replant roots. There would be a return to Chicago for Whittler, but as a college student when she decided to study at Loyola University Chicago, now made more famous by the basketball programs run to the Final Four in 2018 as an 11-seed and 105-year-old superfan Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, BVM.
“We would always go back to Chicago for birthdays, holidays, Thanksgiving, family reunions, and I just loved it there,” Whittler said. “We were the only Black family in our Albuquerque neighborhood, and when we would go back to Chicago, I saw myself represented there.”
After graduating from Loyola, Whittler moved on to Northwestern to study journalism at the Medill School of Journalism. The journalism bug was planted in her early on, first as an avid reader and later as a consumer of current events. She credits her father for that.
“My dad would ask what happened in the world today, and I always wanted to impress him, so I paid attention to whatever I could to try to impress him at the dinner table,” Whittler said.
Her professional career started in college at ABC 7 Chicago, where she worked as a freelance field producer before moving to Richmond, Virginia, to work at NBC 12.
About her time working as a freelancer at ABC 7 Chicago, Whittler said it was an important step in the direction she would eventually craft a career in: broadcast journalism.
“I remember being a kid and watching Soledad O’Brien on CNN. I feel like a lot of Black women can relate to this,” Whittler said.
Whittler said, watching someone who looked like her on TV
“I remember thinking ‘I kind of want to do that’,” she said.
Moving to Atlanta to begin working for Fox 5 Atlanta during the COVID pandemic in 2020 was an interesting transition that taught Whittler a lot about this city and its people. Five years later she says she doesn’t feel like she has had that ‘I’ve made it’ moment.
“I don’t ever feel like I’ve made it,” she said. “I think there was something really humbling about my current job because I always told myself that I wanted to be the kind of anchor who turned in special projects, and whenever they do report, it’s stellar. And I feel like I have been able to do that.”
On weekends, she likes to host storytime, which brings her full circle back to being the new kid in Albuquerque when the local librarian, Ms. Huggins, helped her adjust to a new city at a very formative time in her life.
“I have always loved the library. Ms. Huggins would read “The Tale of Despereaux” every week, and she would use all these different voices,” Whittler said. “I just thought Ms. Huggins was so cool, and I also wanted to encourage kids to read.”
Whittler said the local library was one of the first places that she felt welcomed in New Mexico. Fast-forward to 2025, and she welcomes kids to the library with her storytime appearances. She contacted the Buckhead Library about volunteering as a reader, and the rest is history. During storytime, Whittler used several voices while reading “Lazy Ozzie,” for example.
February has traditionally been a busy month for Whittler because of the amount of Black History Month reports she and the other anchors and reporters do at Fox 5 Atlanta. In addition to that, she volunteers as a moderator for events like father-daughter dances and the City of Kennesaw’s annual Black History Bowl, which took place earlier this month.
On the importance of local news, Whittler said she believes it’s more important than ever. She feels like she is doing her part to inform the public every day as a member of Atlanta’s media.
“It’s not a secret I never thought I would work in Atlanta. Not anything against it, I was never seeking it out” said Whittler. “Miraculously, I have been blessed with several promotions, and I don’t take that for granted.”