A year on from the COVID-19 shutdown, Don Lemon, CNN anchor and author of This is The Fire, joins HRTS for the latest edition of Brown Bag With the Board for a conversation about truth, justice, and journalism in an era marked by a pandemic, social justice movement, political upheaval, and an insurrection.
Featured Speaker
Don Lemon CNN Anchor and the author of This is The Fire
Don Lemon anchors CNN Tonight with Don Lemon airing weeknights at 10pm. He also serves as a correspondent across CNN/U.S. programming. Based out of the network’s New York bureau, Lemon joined CNN in September 2006.
A news veteran of Chicago, Lemon reported from Chicago in the days leading up to the 2008 presidential election, including an interview with then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel on the day he accepted the position of Chief of Staff for President-elect Barack Obama.He also interviewed Anne Cooper, the 106-year old voter President-elect Obama highlighted in his election night acceptance speech after he had seen Lemon’s interview with Cooper on CNN.
He has served as moderator for CNN’s political town halls, co-moderated the first 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate, and co-hosted Color of Covid special that addressed the pandemic’s impact on communities of color.
Lemon served as the network’s leading voice guiding viewers through the death of George Floyd and summer of nationwide protests and riots.
He has reported and anchored on-the-scene for CNN from many breaking news stories, including the Orlando shooting at Pulse Nightclub (2016), Charleston church shooting (2015), death of Freddie Gray while in police custody, the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO (2014), the George Zimmerman trial (2013), the Boston Marathon bombing (2013), the Philadelphia building collapse (2013), the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (2012), the Colorado Theater Shooting (2012), the death of Whitney Houston, the Inaugural of the 44th President in Washington, D.C., the death of Michael Jackson (2009), Hurricane Gustav in Louisiana (2008) and the Minneapolis bridge collapse (2007).
Lemon has also anchored the network’s breaking news coverage of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the Arab Spring, the death of Osama Bin Laden, and the Joplin tornado. He reported for CNN’s documentary Race and Rage: The Beating of Rodney King, which aired 20 years to the day of the beating. He is also known for holding politicians and public officials accountable in his “No Talking Points” segment.
He joined CNN after serving as a co-anchor for the 5 p.m. newscast for NBC5 News in Chicago. He joined the station in August 2003 as an anchor and reporter after working in New York as a correspondent for NBC News, The Today Show, and NBC Nightly News. In addition to his reporting in New York, Lemon worked as an anchor on Weekend Today and on MSNBC. While at NBC, he covered the explosion of Space Shuttle Columbia, SARS in Canada, and numerous other stories of national and global importance.
In addition to NBC5 and NBC News, Lemon has served as a weekend anchor and general assignment reporter for WCAU-TV, an NBC affiliate in Philadelphia, an anchor and investigative reporter for KTVI-TV in St. Louis, and an anchor for WBRC-TV in Birmingham. He began his career at WNYW in New York City as a news assistant while still in college. In 2009, Ebony named him as one of the Ebony Power 150: the most influential Blacks in America. He has won an Edward R. Murrow award for his coverage of the capture of the Washington, D.C. snipers. He won an Emmy for a special report on real estate in Chicagoland and various other awards for his reporting on the AIDS epidemic in Africa and Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, he won three more local Emmys for his reporting in Africa and a business feature about Craigslist, an online community.
Lemon serves as an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College, teaching and participating in a curriculum designed around new media. He earned a degree in broadcast journalism from Brooklyn College and also attended Louisiana State University.
Moderator
Jeremy Hobson Former host of NPR’s Here & Now
Award-winning journalist Jeremy Hobson is the former host of NPR’s Here & Now, which he helped grow into public radio’s top midday news program, tripling the audience to more than five million in just a few years. On Here & Now, he held political and business leaders to account, and interviewed musicians, actors, scientists, historians, journalists and others with the ultimate goal of informing and enlightening his audience and connecting the news to them.
At the age of 28, he became the youngest national host in public radio’s history, anchoring the Marketplace Morning Report, the most-listened-to business program in America. As host, he interviewed some of the titans of business including Warren Buffett, Bill and Melinda Gates and Richard Branson.
Hobson has reported extensively from the field, including Brexit coverage in the UK, immigration coverage in Mexico, and live broadcasts from more than 20 states. He hosted Here & Now from a porch in front of Old Faithful to celebrate the 100th birthday of the National Park Service, and reported from Ferguson, Missouri following the police killing of Michael Brown.
Hobson has also anchored live special coverage for NPR during breaking news events, including day-long coverage of the Kavanaugh nomination hearings, Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony, and the House Judiciary Committee’s historic vote on Articles of Impeachment.
Hobson’s journalism is strengthened by his background as a reporter and producer. He was the lead Wall Street reporter for Marketplace during the 2008 financial crisis, and covered the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in New York in 2012. In 2003, he worked with NPR’s Guy Raz in Turkey as the Iraq War began.
Hobson’s decades-long broadcasting career began at the age of nine when he started contributing to a program called Treehouse Radio in his home town of Urbana, Illinois.
About the Series: The HRTS Virtual: Brown Bag with the Board series is designed to connect, inform and support our members coast to coast and around the world as we all adjust to the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is free to current Individual Members of HRTS at all levels (HRTS Executive, HRTS Associate, JHRTS, and HRTS Academic) and expanded Corporate Member ticket benefits apply. Attendees may submit questions during registration.
