|
Andrew Eccles
|
|
Humorist Erma Bombeck once observed, “We’re only two years into what I call our Paula Zahn decade, where women are balancing home/husband/children/physical fitness/social conscience—not to mention a cello between our knees—and if I become anymore fulfilled, I’m going to have to sleep on fast-forward.” It’s true: Paula Zahn is one of those people. An academic and athletic star in school, an accomplished musician (she attended Stephens College on a cello scholarship and has performed with the New York Pops Orchestra), a striking beauty (she modeled as a teen), a devoted mother, and a tireless fundraiser for cancer research, Zahn is also one of the country’s preeminent broadcast journalists, best known for her stints on CBS Good Morning and as an anchor and host for CNN. Her seven Emmy Awards are testament to her professional excellence and ferocious drive; one gets the impression that, in her spare time, Zahn rescues kittens from trees, composes avant-garde symphonies, and makes all her own furniture. Zahn admits, “I’ve always pushed myself. I like that. I never slept.” She certainly had little opportunity for counting sheep upon her appointment as a morning anchor on CNN—her first day on the job was September 11, 2001. Zahn emerged from this trial by fire an even more respected journalist, and she has flourished on the network in a variety of roles. Her most recent post was host of Paula Zahn NOW; that emphatic adverb seems entirely appropriate following her name.
Paula Zahn was born February 24, 1956, in Omaha, Nebraska. She was raised in the Chicago suburb Naperville, Illinois, by her father, an IBM executive, and her mother, a teacher. One of four children, Zahn quickly learned to assert herself and demonstrated her signature determination from early childhood, taking up the cello at age five. She excelled in school, captaining the swimming and tennis teams and graduating valedictorian of her high school class. A brief flirtation with modeling in this period convinced the photogenic Zahn that she was not temperamentally suited to the profession, but she did manage to place as a finalist in the 1973 Miss Teenage America pageant. Zahn attended Stephens College in Missouri on a cello scholarship, devoting long hours to practice, and she continued to pursue athletics, competing on the school’s golf and swimming teams. Though she remained devoted to music, Zahn decided to major in journalism, and she graduated with a BA in 1978.
Poised, intelligent, articulate, and easy on the eyes, Zahn found work as a reporter for Dallas’s WFAA-TV almost immediately upon graduating, and for the next nine years she served as an on-air reporter and anchor in a number of increasingly larger local markets, including San Diego, Boston, and Los Angeles. She won two Emmy Awards in this period and enjoyed a high profile in Los Angeles—the nation’s second-largest market—but she elected to go east to marry her fiancé, real estate developer Richard Cohen.
After settling in New York, Zahn was hired by ABC to host The Health Show and coanchor World News This Morning. After two years, she was poached by CBS and ensconced as Harry Smith’s cohost on the struggling CBS This Morning. She enjoyed an easy chemistry with Smith, and the perennially underperforming morning show saw its ratings quickly improve—though it remained in third place, overshadowed by NBC’s Today and ABC’s Good Morning America. CBS tapped Zahn to cohost its coverage of the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics, and her performance (along with CBS’s presentation in general) was widely criticized as stiff and disconnected. She fared better returning to her roots as an investigative reporter, winning a third Emmy Award for her 48 Hours report on the mainstreaming of mentally handicapped people.
CBS changed the format of its morning program in 1996, freeing Zahn to take the Saturday anchor slot on the CBS Evening News. She periodically filled in for regular anchor Dan Rather on the weekday newscasts, and continued to contribute reports to 48 Hours. In 1999, Zahn left CBS for Fox News, where she hosted the daily program The Edge with Paula Zahn, an in-depth, hard-news program that gave her the opportunity to interview world leaders on a regular basis. Zahn enthused, “In addition to hosting, fronting the broadcast was critical to me. All the action is in cable news today…I think I am the only woman in the country who’s solo anchoring an evening newscast. I have a tremendous responsibility.”
But her tenure at Fox News was a short one. In 2001, she was abruptly fired by the network, which accused her of breaking her contract by negotiating for a position with CNN (a court case brought by Fox would eventually rule in Zahn’s favor). CNN hired Zahn virtually on the spot, installing her as coanchor of its morning newscast. Her mettle was immediately tested, as her first day on air—Tuesday, September 11—saw terrorists attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and riveted a stricken populace to CNN’s non-stop coverage of the cataclysmic events. CNN had initially intended to slowly develop Zahn’s presence on the network, but she and fellow recent hire Aaron Brown were pressed into service covering the attacks on a nearly continuous basis. As business slowly returned to something resembling the usual, Zahn began her regular schedule of anchoring the newscast from 7:00 to 10:00 a.m.
Zahn has held a number of posts at CNN, hosting American Morning with Paula Zahn, Live from the Headlines, and Paula Zahn NOW. She developed a reputation as a rigorous interviewer, sitting down with the likes of Bill Clinton, George Bush, Fidel Castro, and Mikhail Gorbachev. Zahn’s work has garnered many journalism and broadcasting honors—including an impressive collection of seven Emmy Awards—and she has been recognized with an Albert Einstein College of Medicine Spirit Achievement Award, the Second Annual Cancer Awareness Award by the Congressional Families Action for Cancer Awareness, the Spirit of Life award from the City of Hope Cancer Center, and a citation from New York’s Beth Israel Medical Center for her contributions to the battle against breast cancer. In 1992, she made her debut at Carnegie Hall, playing cello with the New York Pops Orchestra. She is a devoted mother of three. After thirty years of journalistic excellence and personal achievement, the “Paula Zahn decade” shows no signs of concluding anytime soon.
|