T-Squared: Alana Rocha is Our Newest Reporter

She's being asked to fill some pretty big shoes — Thanh Tan's, and before that Elise Hu's — but Alana Rocha is up to the task. And when she starts her new job at the Trib as a multimedia reporter on October 22, she'll be a magnificent addition to our staff.

Alana comes to us from YNN Austin, the 24-hour news channel found on Time Warner cable systems, where she has reported on politics and the big policy issues of the day for nearly three years. In 2011 she became the lead political reporter for the network and its weekly political show, Capital Tonight. Over the past year, she followed Gov. Rick Perry and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Surfside, in their bids for the Republican presidential nomination.

A graduate of the Unversity of Florida with degrees in journalism and Spanish, Alana began her career in Gainesville, Florida, working for CBS Radio. After transitioning to TV as a reporter for the local PBS station, she moved to Wichita, Kansas, where she covered local and state politics for the CBS affiliate.

Alana is a healthy mix of tough as nails and charming as hell, and her body of work says everything about her bonafides. We've been fans for some time, as you can tell by the fact that we generously helped ourselves to several of her stories during the Republican and Democratic conventions (YNN was one of our content partners for those two weeks). It's clear that she believes in public service journalism as much as we do.

We can't wait to sic her on the Capitol's power players for our purposes — and yours.