{"id":56144,"date":"2018-04-04T22:43:13","date_gmt":"2018-04-04T22:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56144"},"modified":"2018-04-04T23:19:29","modified_gmt":"2018-04-04T23:19:29","slug":"reigning-from-the-ground-the-gravity-of-soledad-obrien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56144","title":{"rendered":"Reigning from the Ground: The Gravity of Soledad O\u2019Brien"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reigning from the Ground: The Gravity of Soledad O\u2019Brien<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Bitch<\/a>
\nIssue #78 | Spring 2018<\/a>, 2018-03-13<\/p>\n

Lisa Factora-Borchers<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

photography by Margarita Corporan<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The rumors circulated and reached me months before I met her. People who knew her in various capacities\u2014from her personal representatives to those who briefly met her at a speaking event\u2014repeated the same sentiment: Even with all her successes and all the reasons not to be, Soledad O\u2019Brien<\/a> is incredibly sweet and down-to-earth.<\/p>\n

Like millions of other CNN viewers, I became familiar with O\u2019Brien\u2019s broadcast journalism in the early 2000s, when she secured her status as one of the few women journalists of color in mainstream media. In 2006, during the zenith of blogging, Heather B. Armstrong<\/a>, a popular writer in the mom-blogosphere, gushed about meeting O\u2019Brien in person and described her \u201cglowing aura\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was exquisite in every conceivable way, perfect hair and makeup and wardrobe, and when she greeted everyone and made small talk, I got the sense that her brain was wired to a digital encyclopedia of everything that has ever happened on Earth, because she spoke with authority on every topic.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some descriptions stay with you, even after 11 years, until you have to shed them as prep\u2014because you can\u2019t interview a master interviewer when you\u2019re preoccupied with talk of glowing auras and infallibility.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien\u2019s home is a sprawling apartment in New York\u2019s Chelsea<\/a> neighborhood (where, it should be noted, she has lived since well before its ascent to ultra-gentrified chic). Its white built-in shelves are stacked with impeccably aligned books interrupted by candles, framed photos, and artisan bowls and vases. The place is immaculate, but not intimidating. This feels intentional. As far as the famed O\u2019Brien aura itself, it is a bit different than I imagined. She carries herself with a sense of ease and casual authority; although she comes through the door with her hands and arms full, that doesn\u2019t stop her from calling out friendly greetings to me and the photography team. O\u2019Brien has spent the past three decades telling stories. Google her\u2014every kind of story that a journalist dreams about covering, she\u2019s covered: natural disasters, structural inequality, national identity, politics, sports, and narrative stories from marginalized communities. There isn\u2019t one way to describe her successes; they\u2019re like vines\u2014woven and connected, multitudinous and plentiful. After she dropped out of Harvard, she began working as a reporter, in 1989, for the medical radio show Second Opinion<\/em>. She spent the \u201990s reporting and anchoring weekend and morning shows for NBC before eventually transitioning to CNN in 2003. While anchoring CNN\u2019s American Morning<\/em>, O\u2019Brien was moved to the documentary division and from 2007 until 2013 hosted the series In America, which eventually led to two spin-offs, Black in America<\/em> and Latino in America<\/em>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The rumors circulated and reached me months before I met her. People who knew her in various capacities\u2014from her personal representatives to those who briefly met her at a speaking event\u2014repeated the same sentiment: Even with all her successes and all the reasons not to be, Soledad O\u2019Brien is incredibly sweet and down-to-earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8413,8,20,25],"tags":[28365,7510,3142,28366,28367,12774],"class_list":["post-56144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-bitch","tag-bitch-media","tag-cnn","tag-lisa-factora-borchers","tag-margarita-corporan","tag-soledad-obrien"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56144"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56148,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56144\/revisions\/56148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}