CNN’s O’Brien details 22-year career during Bristol stop

BRISTOL, Va. – Emmy Award-winning television journalist Soledad O’Brien had a lighthearted, yet productive Saturday morning.

She went running, worked out and then bought gloves for her children at the Lee Highway Walmart because “we don’t have one in New York City.”

She even posed for a photo in the middle of State Street to commemorate her first visit to the Twin City.

Later, the CNN correspondent and anchor displayed a more serious side while telling a crowd of 300 about the most interesting and troubling stories she’s covered in her 22-year career.

During her remarks, O’Brien also encouraged her audience to find solutions to problems, overcome obstacles and be willing to mentor others if the opportunity arises.

“I get to share people’s stories. That’s powerful. I look for the stories that others aren’t doing or don’t always get to tell,” O’Brien said during remarks at the Kegley Auditorium on Virginia Intermont College’s campus.

O’Brien, 43, was the final speaker in the Bristol Public Library Foundation’s 2009 Discovery Series. For the past two years, the series has brought nationally known authors, journalists and other personalities to the Twin City.

After working as a television anchor at NBC and now CNN, O’Brien is devoting her energies to long-term, documentary projects that examine such issues as social and cultural differences. Her Black in America, Black in America 2 and Hispanic in America documentaries have won critical acclaim for examining the changing face of this country.O’Brien, whose heritage is a mixture of black, Hispanic and Irish cultures, has established a niche.

“In seventh grade it wasn’t too cool, but the culture has changed. Being one of a kind – which I’m not anymore – can be an interesting thing. And I think it can make you both an insider and an outsider and that is very valuable as a journalist,” O’Brien said during an interview with the Bristol Herald Courier. “It allows you to think about stories differently. A lot of communities we don’t cover well in the news are communities I know real well. And as an outsider, you want to learn all you can about something.”

O’Brien said she failed to get the first TV news job she applied for because her skin was “too light” to fill the station’s one available slot for a black reporter.

In the years since, she said, her interracial heritage has been “nothing but beneficial.”

Despite previously being named to People Magazine’s 50 most beautiful people lists, O’Brien said her looks haven’t been an obstacle to the kind of journalism she wants to practice.

“The content of my work is pretty serious and CNN is pretty serious. I’ve had fewer problems with people thinking you can’t do quality work,” O’Brien said. “One of the reasons I left NBC, a hundred years ago, was because I wanted a wider range of stories.”

O’Brien said it was that desire to pursue more serious reporting and delve more deeply into issues that ultimately prompted her 2003 departure from the anchor desk of NBC’s Weekend Today program.
Her more recent work is a drastic change from a funny Today story about a trapeze school in New York that drew substantial public reaction.

“Trapeze school was great. It was really, really fun to do. But I don’t want on my gravestone, ‘Covered trapeze school really, really well.’ There are other things that I wanted to do,” she said. “Hard news stories were few and far between, except for breaking news.”

In recent years, she has shifted from anchor to correspondent and her “In America” projects have evolved into a separate division.

Currently taking a two-week vacation, O’Brien hopes the change means she will travel less next year, after racking up a million frequent-flyer miles during the past year producing four documentaries.

Her reporting on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 Southeast Asia tsunami and documentaries about being black and Hispanic in America are among her most memorable assignments.

“Katrina was probably defining for me. It was just me and a photographer and we would go out and shoot four stories a day. There were so many stories to tell,” she said in response to an audience question.

While many tragic stories sometimes offer “silver linings” where heroes emerge, that was not the case when she ventured to Guyana last year to report on the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown mass suicides.

“Jonestown is one of the hardest stories to cover because it’s just so sad,” O’Brien said.

Following her presentation, audience members said O’Brien was an inspiring speaker.

“That was very encouraging,” said Savannah Horn, a senior at Honaker High School. “It encouraged me, as a student, to do my best and that girls can succeed.”

After the presentation, Horn was among about 100 who stayed to meet O’Brien, pose for a photograph, get an autograph or share stories.

“Her story was very interesting,” said Dennis Hill of Bristol, Va. “The obstacles in her life and how we can overcome obstacles, that was inspiring.”

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