At one point during CNN’s cocktail coverage on New Year’s Eve, Anderson Cooper sobered up long enough to salute a news network mentor and friend: Aaron Brown.
Brown, 76, an award-winning ABC and CNN news anchor and journalist, died December 29 in Washington.
Part of a deep bench led by Peter Jennings at ABC News in the 1990s, Brown moved to CNN in 2001 and helped Cooper and others find their feet in an electronic newsroom. Shortly after joining CNN, Brown won awards for his on-the-spot, downtown Manhattan coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Center in September of 2001. Stepping before the CNN cameras for the first time (he was still in training), he stayed on the air for 17 straight hours and became the unflappable way into the horrifying story for many viewers.
As a viewer, I first encountered his work a decade earlier when he anchored ABC’s World New Now, an overnight newscast, one that sprang up among the Big Three legacy broadcasters once all-news networks began to widen the landscape.
I can thank my son Dan for introducing me to Aaron Brown. Dan was born in January of 1993. I became acquainted with World News Now while taking turns tackling middle-of-the-night bottle feedings. Here was this news anchor with his jacket off and his sleaves rolled up. He looked less Dad-like than Dan Rather or Lloyd Robertson, and read from a smarter, slightly subversive script.
Beside him, in some shots, was a cardboard cut out of Lisa McRee, the original co-anchor of the series who departed in January of ’93. (It remained in that chair until McRee was replaced that May by a Canadian from Global News — Thalia Assuras).
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There was something about watching that show, in that tranquil hour (three, four a.m.?), while holding a baby, that woke you up and kept you engaged. Sure, there was a sense that the inmates had taken over the ABC news asylum, left to their own tricks while management slept. World News Now was the hard news version of Saturday Night Live, serious new reporting with a younger, cheekier spin.
Plus it was fun to watch. Brown and others would give sports scores in the style of George Carlin (“In a partial score, Mets five.”) Weather forcasts seemed to include made up names and maps. Because it was the middle of the night, you weren’t always sure if you were being punked or not. You followed Brown where ever he took you, however, because this was the newscaster you had been waiting for.
World News Now is still on the air but Brown’s tenure only lasted a couple of years before he moved on to CNN. One Canadian newsman who worked with him at ABC is Kevin Newman, the former W5 and Global National anchor. Kevin is now retired but still delivering crisp, apt insights on LinkedIn and other places. While writing this post, I reached out to Kevin and asked what made Brown stand out as a journalist. Here is what he texted back, word for word, within minutes:
I inherited Aaron’s overnight show at ABC in 1994, after he moved to daylight hours as a correspondent. But no one could inherit his subversive wit. Everyone who came after tried to varying degrees, and that’s why World News Now survives after three decades.
It took the news seriously, but not itself, and because of that its audience has been extraordinarily loyal. I borrowed heavily from Aaron’s wry and knowing style when I helped establish Global National, knowing it was a sure way to connect with viewers. Aaron was also a superb writer, understanding that context and history elevated daily network news. In his final years he taught journalism at the Walter Cronkite School at the University of Arizona, and I like to think his protoges are everywhere in journalism, examining events with intelligent humour and providing big-picture understanding. That’s likely his proudest legacy – a reporter’s voice everyone understood as uniquely powerful and tried to copy, but couldn’t.
Newman’s assessment of Brown, a knowing voice with a “subversive wit,” is exactly what I was reaching for in trying to describe him. That he came up with it so quickly speaks to Brown’s inspiring powers as an example and mentor and Newman’s own precision as a newsman and a writer. These are the news voices we will all need, more than ever, in 2025.
Condolences to Brown’s family, friends and all he inspired — viewers as well as future journalists.
