Words matter. These are the best Soledad O’Brien Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I think of myself as a journalist and a storyteller.
I’ve taken the leap of faith to stop punching the company time clock and start working for myself. I’m now the CEO of Starfish Media Group, my production company, in New York City.
Am I a liberal or conservative? I’m neither. Like most Americans, I find politics very frustrating. Like most Americans, I’d like to hear from politicians the facts. That is what drives me.
I started a lecture series that was inspired by my reporting on race in America. The ‘Black in America’ series launched on CNN in 2007 as an opportunity to freshen the national conversation on race.
I don’t know how you can move out of one’s socioeconomic category if you don’t have education.
It is truly not fun to be the family that sticks out in an all-white community. On the other side, I have five brothers and sisters; we all look exactly the same, and we’re very, very tight. The lessons about race were not pleasant, but there are things that I loved about my childhood.
What I think is great style advice that people have told me is that people who are confident look beautiful. No matter what they’re wearing, no matter if they’re inappropriately dressed, no matter if their hair’s not really done right, eyebrows haven’t been tweezed.
At screenings for ‘Black in America,’ I’ve heard people say, ‘Well you know, I never thought you were black until you did Katrina, and then I thought you were black.’
CNN, a part of the Time Warner company, lives for news about everything and anyone. In the office, the bosses openly discuss the need for a diverse staff and diverse stories, and each time we draw new viewers, the effort intensifies.
I look forward to beginning a relationship with Al Jazeera America, which has made a commitment to producing quality programming and pursuing underreported stories.
Being an entrepreneur is a mindset. You have to see things as opportunities all the time. I like to do interviews. I like to push people on certain topics. I like to dig into the stories where there’s not necessarily a right or wrong answer.
I like being done up! I love going to events and wearing fabulous gowns. I like hitting that spot of doing what feels good for me. If it makes other people happy, great; if it doesn’t, then that’s great, too!
As CNN saw our growth in African-American viewership, they affirmed a fundamental truth of news coverage – people will watch you if they see themselves in what you report. It doesn’t hurt if the people doing the reporting look like them, too.
We have a foundation, the Soledad O’Brien Starfish Foundation. We send girls to and through college. We started-off saying we send girls to college, but to do so is not enough. Seeing them through college is the key.
Over the years, my husband and I have sent two dozen or more girls to college and helped them with whatever else they needed.
When I was 13, I began relaxing my hair, and that meant when I turned 18 it began to crack and fall off, and when I began anchoring, I had short, stubbly pieces of hair. And trying to report in San Francisco with fog meant my hair swelled.
I’m black. I’m Latina. My mom is Cuban. Afro-Cuban. My dad is white and Australian.
It is a sad day for our country when the moral foundation of our law and the acknowledgment of God has to be hidden from public view to appease a federal judge.
On Sunday night, my husband makes a five-course family dinner.
I don’t think being beautiful takes away from your credibility.
HBO is undeniably a leader in meaningful storytelling in a wide array of formats. I’m honored to join the REAL SPORTS team and look forward to continuing my fervor for uncovering unique and impactful stories.
My hair journey involved a lot of trying to figure out how to deal with my hair as a bi-racial girl in a white community living in Long Island, N.Y., where no one had a clue what to do with it.
At Al Jazeera, the first story I did was to sit down with a former Haitian dictator, Jean-Claude Duvalier, and grill him about crimes against humanity. Al Jazeera is giving me the opportunity to tell important stories and stories that I want to tell.
If you can tell a story well, you can move people to do something.
Morning TV is about habits. What you really need is for viewers to find you, get comfortable with you, make you part of their mornings. If you can make news, deliver things they value, you can be successful.
When I left ‘American Morning’ in 2007, I’d focused on doing documentaries. But I thought ‘Starting Point’ was a great opportunity to be involved in the zeitgeist.
When I took a couple of years to do the documentaries after I left ‘American Morning’ – what was I gone for, five years? – I didn’t feel that I was floating under the radar.
I come to New Orleans so often that, one day soon, someone’s going to declare me a native. I love the food. I love the music. I serve on the board of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra.
I think what I love about the documentary process is that you bring yourself to the documentary. And hopefully that makes you ask good questions, and hopefully that makes you reveal a little bit about yourself as well.
I covered Katrina, I’ve covered the tsunamis, all of them, the Haiti earthquake… you get to a certain point in your career where you say, ‘I want to now cover what I want to cover.’
To me, Jeff Zucker is synonymous with winning. He’s an incredible news executive.
There are thousands of inspirational stories waiting to be told about young women who yearn for a great education. They are stories of struggle and stories of success, and they will inspire others to take action and work to change lives.
I’m black and Cuban, Australian and Irish, and like most people in America, I’m someone whose roots come from somewhere else. I’m a mixed race, first-generation American.
Investing in girls can actually move the needle in communities… and can actually benefit boys, because girls are the mothers of boys.
I e-mail or phone my best girlfriend daily. Having people who know you well helps you stay grounded and gives perspective to whatever momentary drama you’re going through.
The thing I love about political interviews is, if you’re really prepared, you can make great headway because these are the people for whom, theoretically at least, the buck stops.
African-Americans assume I’m named after the notorious Soledad prison or Mount Soledad in California. Latinos want to know if I’m lonely. That doesn’t fit, because I grew up with five siblings, and I have four kids of my own, so I’m not lonely at all, though I do often seek solitude, the actual meaning of my name.
We struck an unusual deal. I’ll get to leave CNN with my catalog and documentaries. We were able to create a brand at CNN – ‘Black in America’ – that I now own. I can take that brand and extend it in any way I want.
Audiences want great story telling; it’s why white people watch my show ‘Black in America.’ It’s why black people watch ‘Latina in America.’ All of that is statistically shown and proven but it was because it was good story telling about people who were outsiders.
People are interested in things not necessarily covered by the mainstream media, so they download things online. The categories are growing because people find out that they’re not able to get information about stories that are of interest to them on the evening news.
My trademark at CNN was really asking insightful questions and making sure people are understanding the connections in humanity, and I think that is the core of education.
When I was leaving NBC News to go to CNN, people would say, ‘What?! Why would you possibly leave the ‘Today Show’ to go to cable?’ If I would’ve listened to people, I would’ve been on a great platform, but I wouldn’t have grown as a journalist. So far, most of the steps in my career have been really good.
Stories, as we’re taught in journalism school early on, are told through people. Those stories make our documentaries powerful. You can explore someone’s culture, you can explore their experience, you can explore an issue through human beings who are going through it.
I’ve never taken fashion too seriously. I try to enjoy it.
