Steven Williams - WDAM.COM - TV 7 - News, Weather and Sports

A native son of Laurel with deep family roots in the Pine Belt, Steven graduated from Northeast Jones High School and Jones County Junior College and earned his bachelor's degree in journalism at the University of Southern Mississippi, graduating summa cum laude.

Now anchor of the Nightbeat, one of the top-rated 10 p.m. newscasts in the country, Steven is a veteran journalist with more than 20 years of experience in broadcast, print, and online media. As a reporter in the field, he covered just about every kind of story that could happen in South Mississippi, ranging from presidential campaign rallies to a law enforcement raid on a backwoods moonshine still.

"If there's a more consistently interesting and fun job than mine, I don't know what it is," he says. "I've never had a boring day in this business. You're always learning, always venturing into something new. Plus for an anchor there's the sheer exhilaration of doing live television every night, which is a high-wire act without a net. And yeah, I've bitten the dust a few times."

When the camera's off, Steven is an avid traveler and art enthusiast whose journeys have taken him to 13 countries on three continents, and countless miles and hours of wide-eyed wandering through dozens of the world's greatest museums and art-filled European churches. He once flew to Belgium specifically to admire Jan van Eyck's stupendous 15th-century altarpiece, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, at the Sint-Baafskathedraal in Ghent.

"The only thing I've seen that compares with it in power and grandeur is Michelangelo's ceiling frescoes in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican," he says.

Back home in Lamar County, one of Steven's more down-to-earth pastimes is bicycling on the Longleaf Trace.

"One of the best things that's ever been done for the Hattiesburg area," he calls this 41-mile-long rails-to-trails conversion. "To all the folks who helped make it happen, I say thank you."