DON LEMON
Award-Winning CNN Anchor, CNN Tonight with Don Lemon
Audiences will immediately recognize Don Lemon as a veteran TV journalist and trusted source of information from CNN, NBC and MSNBC. Relatable and charismatic, Lemon’s award-winning work defies genre, candidly exposing injustice and the resiliency of the human spirit. A true product of the modern news age, Lemon discusses how he has embraced social media’s power to reach viewers. An inspiration to diverse audiences, he shares his hard-fought rise to prime time as one of the most prominent African-American and gay men in TV news today.
In his latest book, This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism, Don Lemon brings his vast audience and experience as a reporter and a Black man to today’s most urgent question: How can we end racism in America in our lifetimes?
BIO
Don Lemon anchors CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, which airs weeknights at 10 pm. He also serves as a correspondent across CNN’s 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 that city 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.
Lemon has reported and anchored on-the-scene for CNN from many breaking domestic news stories, including numerous mass shooting incidents, the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody, the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, the George Zimmerman trial, the Boston marathon bombing, the deaths of Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson, and the inauguration of the 44th president in Washington, DC, among others.
Lemon also anchored the network’s breaking news coverage of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the Arab Spring and the death of Osama bin Laden. Lemon reported for CNN’s documentary Race and Rage: The Beating of Rodney King, which aired 20 years to the day of the beating. He also is known for holding politicians and public officials accountable in his “No Talking Points” segment.
Lemon joined CNN after serving as a co-anchor for NBC5 News in Chicago and as a correspondent in New York 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, Lemon covered the explosion of Space Shuttle Columbia, the SARS outbreak in Canada and other stories of national and global importance.
Lemon also has worked as a weekend anchor and general assignment reporter for WCAU-TV 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 Lemon to the Ebony Power 150, a list of the most influential African Americans. He has won an Edward R. Murrow award for his coverage of the capture of the Washington, DC snipers. He won an Emmy for a special report on real estate in the Chicago area and various other awards for his reporting on the AIDS epidemic in Africa and Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, he won three local Emmys for his reporting in Africa and a business feature on Craigslist.
Lemon serves on the Board of Trustees at Brooklyn College. He earned a degree in broadcast journalism from Brooklyn College and also attended Louisiana State University.
