{"id":285653,"date":"2026-09-14T10:28:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T10:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/285653\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T10:28:23","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T10:28:23","slug":"john-last-meet-the-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/285653\/","title":{"rendered":"John Last | Meet the Team"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAQAAAAe\/WZNAAAAEElEQVR42mM8U88ABowYDABAxQPltt5zqAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==\" alt=\"John Last.jpg\" class=\"img-responsive lazyload full default\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" data- data-\/><\/p>\n<p>I began my broadcasting career in my hometown of Franklin where I served as the News Director at WFRA radio.\u00a0 I also worked for a short time at WKQW in Oil City. I was a political science major at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and never believed I would be in the news business, especially television news.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>After decades in the television news business in Erie, I was ready to retire but News Director Scott MacDowell gave me an offer I could not refuse. He asked me to stay and do special stories.\u00a0 Those stories would be sometimes unusual, sometimes thought-provoking, and sometimes heartwarming. My news segment called &#8220;The Last Word&#8221; was born in March 2021. It is broadcast Mondays and Fridays at 6pm.\u00a0 I&#8217;m having a lot of fun traveling throughout Northwestern Pennsylvania, Southwestern New York, and Northeastern Ohio to bring our viewers these stories.<\/p>\n<p>I live in Erie with my wife Julie and our 5 cats.\u00a0 My two kids are all grown-up, but I still have a fondness for FIRST Robotics and Penn State.<\/p>\n<p>I enjoy running and have completed 17 marathons.\u00a0 That was a long time ago.\u00a0 Now, I am completely happy finishing a 5K such as the annual Applefest race in Franklin. My wife and I keep busy exploring bike trails in the region and across the country.\u00a0 We also try to master recipes from the Great British Baking Show cookbooks.<\/p>\n<p>I am active at Sacred Heart Parish in Erie and serve in the Knights of Columbus. I enjoy doing stand-up comedy for the Laughter in the Limelight fundraiser to benefit NAMI and the Mental Health Association of NW Pennsylvania.\u00a0 I am a small contributor to the Erie News Now Trivia Team that competes each year to benefit the Achievement Center.\u00a0 I proudly won the fantasy football championship at the TV station during its first year of existence about 20 years ago.\u00a0 I haven&#8217;t won since.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Contact John at <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.erienewsnow.com\/team\/john-last\/mailto:jlast@wicu12.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">jlast@wicu12.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I began my broadcasting career in my hometown of Franklin where I served as the News Director at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[136,138,137],"class_list":["post-285653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}