Aaron Brown Wiki
Aaron Brown is an American journalist from Minnesota who previously worked for CNN as a broadcast journalist since in July 1, 2001 to June 2007.
Aaron Brown Biography
Brown was born in Minnesota, U.S. to a Jewish family. His father Morton, was a scrap-metal dealer and his mother Rose, a home-maker. He is the third of five children.
He was bright and precocious as a child, he developed an early fascination with broadcast journalism. There was once his father took him to the local paper’s newsroom to visit a friend and the incident greatly impressed him. From that very day, he decided he would be a journalist when he grew up. He dropped out of the University of Minnesota as a political science major and signed up for active duty in the U.S. Coast Guard.
He was a longtime reporter for ABC, the founding host of ABC’s World News Now, weekend anchor of World News Tonight and the host of CNN’s flagship evening program NewsNight with Aaron Brown. He was the anchor of the PBS documentary series Wide Angle from 2008 to 2009. From 2007 to 2014, he was a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University from. In 2006, he assumed the John J. Rhodes Chair in Public Policy and American Institutions at Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University. From 2007 to 2014, he taught a course called “Turning Points in Television News History” at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at ASU.
He started doing radio talk shows in Minneapolis and later in Los Angeles, before he got at the national news networks. He spent more than 15 years at television stations there, first at the NBC affiliate and then the CBS affiliate.
In 1976, he was hired by Seattle’s KING-TV, initially working as an assignment editor but soon becoming a reporter and eventually anchor. In 1986 he moved to KIRO-TV, where he anchored the evening newscast, and remained there until December 1991.
In ABC
He was brought to New York City to be the founding anchor of the late-night news program World News Now. He also worked as a reporter for ABC’s news operation. He left World News Now to work as a reporter for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, as well as Nightline and various other ABC programming. He became the substitute anchor for Jennings and the permanent anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight Saturday and Good Morning America Sunday.
In CNN
At CNN, his first on-air broadcast was September 11, 2001 though his first day was July 1, 2001. He received international recognition as well as winning the Edward R. Murrow Award for his reporting of the attacks from CNN’s rooftop in Manhattan, the World Trade Center site and the areas surrounding the remains of the Twin Towers in New York City.
When the South Tower collapsed, he was listening to a report from the site of The Pentagon, where there was another attack. The building started to fall while Brown was off camera, and he had to interrupt the reporter so he could report on what he had seen.
He remarked that there was another massive explosion and that he could not see the building anymore (he was not aware that the entire building had fallen yet).
As the second tower fell on live television, he fell silent, until he quietly said, “…good Lord…there are no words…” and resumed reporting after several seconds. CNN saw Brown as a trainee of Peter Jennings and wanted to duplicate Jennings’ success for their network.
CNN branded their flagship evening program NewsNight with Aaron Brown. Brown also served as host of CNN Presents and was assigned the lead anchor during breaking news and special events.
He covered numerous other news events for CNN, including the War on Terrorism, the 2002 House and Senate elections, the Beltway sniper attacks and the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.
In 2003, during the invasion of Iraq, he anchored from the CNN Center in Atlanta, providing viewers with the latest information from frontline reports as well as from Washington, D.C. and United States Central Command in Doha, Qatar.
Still in 2003, he garnered negative press attention for continuing to play in the Bob Hope Classic golf tournament in Palm Desert, California, after the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster occurred. While other major news anchors immediately left their vacations, he did not come into the studio and instead continued playing golf.
During the United States 2004 presidential election, CNN used the NASDAQ Market Site for its election coverage, which some point to as the birth of the idea for Wolf Blitzer’s The Situation Room. He was tasked to periodically make commentaries on the trends of the evening’s results, while Anderson Cooper was then tasked at monitoring key Senate and House races.
On November 3, 2005, it was announced that Brown would be leaving the CNN network, with Anderson Cooper’s program Anderson Cooper 360° replacing NewsNight as the flagship program in CNN’s evening lineup in an effort to shift toward a younger demographic.
The two had shared anchoring duties in the 10:00 PM time slot through the early fall after Cooper’s break out success covering Hurricane Katrina. With many describing his cerebral “news for grown-ups” style as one to be missed.
Aaron Brown Age
Aaron Brown was born in Hopkins, Minnesota, U.S. in November 10, 1948.
Aaron Brown Wife
He is married to a newscaster he met while working in Seattle in 1980. He married Charlotte Raynor in 1982. They have one daughter, Gabby (b. 1988).
Public broadcasting
Until June 2007, Brown was under contract with CNN, which prevented him from doing interviews or returning to television. In 2008, he returned to television as the host of PBS’s Wide Angle. He was anchor of the series, and did reports from the field through the end of the series on September 2, 2009.
Aaron Brown Awards
Brown won three Emmy Awards, including one Emmy for his report “Streets of Iraq” during the Iraq War. He also won a DuPont, two New York Film Society World medals and a George Foster Peabody Award.