Anderson Hays Cooper (born June 3, 1967) is a television journalist currently working for the CNN television network. He anchors Anderson Cooper 360°, which on November 2, 2005, was moved to 10pm EST and expanded to two hours, taking over Aaron Brown's NewsNight timeslot starting on November 7, 2005.

Background

Family

Cooper is the younger son of writer Wyatt Emory Cooper and artist, designer and writer Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt. Cooper is of mostly English and Irish ancestry, as well as fairly distant Dutch and Spanish roots.

His father died on January 5, 1978 at age of 50 from a series of heart attacks; this is said to have affected the young Cooper "enormously." In retrospect, he has said "I think I’m a lot like my father" in several ways, including "that we look a lot alike and that we have a similar sense of humor and a love of storytelling." Cooper considers his father's book Families as "Sort of a guide on [...] how he would have wanted me to live my life and the choices he would have wanted me to make. And so I feel very connected to him."

Cooper's older brother, Carter, took his own life on July 22, 1988 at age 23 by jumping from the 14th floor terrace of Vanderbilt's New York City luxury apartment. Gloria Vanderbilt later wrote about her son's death in the book "A Mother's Story", in which she expresses her belief that the suicide was caused by a psychotic episode induced by an allergy to the medical prescription drug Proventil. Carter's suicide is apparently what sparked Anderson to become a journalist; "Loss is a theme that I think a lot about, and it’s something in my work that I dwell on. I think when you experience any kind of loss, especially the kind I did, you have questions about survival: Why do some people thrive in situations that others can’t tolerate? Would I be able to survive and get on in the world on my own?"

Education

Cooper attended The Dalton School in New York City and graduated from Yale in 1989 with a BA in Political Science. After his first correspondence work in the early 1990s, he took a break from reporting and lived in Vietnam for half a year, during which time he studied Vietnamese at the University of Hanoi.

Television Work

Channel One

After Cooper graduated from Yale, he tried unsucessfully to gain entry-level employment with ABC answering telephones, so instead took a job as fact-checker for the much smaller Channel One, which produced an MTV-style news program that was broadcast to many high schools in the United States.

After six months, Cooper decided that he wanted to switch to reporting, but "figured if I told anyone they wouldn't give me the chance [...] I quit my job and moved overseas and started shooting with my own video camera. I figured if I put myself in situations where there weren't many Americans around and I shot little stories, then I could sell them to Channel One. I wanted to make it impossible for them to not put me on air. [...] I had a friend of mine make a fake press pass on a Macintosh, and I snuck into Burma and hooked up with some students fighting the Burmese government. I had met the person who was involved in the Burmese student movement in New York, and they gave me the name of a contact in a town in Western Thailand. So I found my way to this town that was like a Wild West border town, and I contacted the person and said I was a reporter. We met in an ice cream parlor, and then they agreed to take me in, and they smuggled me across the border into Burma."

After reporting from Burma, Cooper lived in Vietnam for half a year and then returned to filing stories from a variety of war-torn regions around the globe, including Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda. Haunted by his brother's suicide, "The only thing I really knew is that I was hurting and needed to go someplace where the pain outside matched the pain I was feeling inside." Cooper describes himself as having become "fascinated with conflict" during this dangerous period of his life in which he was occasionally shot at. While "witnessing history" was an incentive for him to report from such locales, "I also found that I felt that the molecules in the air were different. In all the places where there was conflict it was sort of a highly charged atmosphere and there was something about it that appealed to me. I found I was very interested in issues of survival and why some people survive and others don't. I wanted to see first-hand. I felt very comfortable in those places."

ABC

In 1995, Cooper became a correspondent for ABC News, eventually rising to the position of co-anchor of ABC World News Now. In 2000 he switched career paths, taking a job as the host of ABC's reality show The Mole: "My last year at ABC, I was working overnights anchoring this newscast then during the day at 20/20. So I was sleeping in two- or four-hour shifts, and I was really tired and wanted a change. I wanted to clear my head and get out of news a little bit, and I was interested in reality TV —and it was interesting." One executive publicly predicted his move to reality TV would mean the end of his career as a newscaster.

CNN

However, he left The Mole after its second season to return to broadcast news in 2001, now at CNN: "Two seasons was enough, and 9/11 happened, and I thought I needed to be getting back to news." His first position at CNN was to anchor alongside Paula Zahn on American Morning. Since 2002, he has hosted CNN's New Year's Eve special from Times Square. On September 8, 2003 he was made anchor of Anderson Cooper 360°, a fast-paced weeknight news program.

Describing his philosophy as an anchor, Cooper has said: "I think the notion of traditional anchor is fading away, the all-knowing, all-seeing person who speaks from on high. I don't think the audiences really buys that anymore. As a viewer, I know I don't buy it. I think you have to be yourself, and you have to be real and you have to admit what you don't know, and talk about what you do know, and talk about what you don't know as long as you say you don't know it. I tend to relate more to people on television who are just themselves, for good or for bad, than I do to someone who I believe is putting on some sort of persona. The anchorman on The Simpsons is a reasonable facsimile of some anchors who have that problem."

In January 2005, he was sent to South Asia to cover the tsunami damage. That same month, he also went to Baghdad, Iraq to cover the elections. In February and March 2005, he covered the Cedar Revolution in Beirut, Lebanon. In early April 2005, he reported from Rome, covering the death of Pope John Paul II, and from London, covering the royal wedding.

In July 2005, he covered Hurricane Dennis from Pensacola, yielding one of the most memorable bits of footage from that particular storm. He and John Zarella were standing outside a Ramada during the worst of the storm when a large metal sign blew down. During CNN coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he confronted Sen. Mary Landrieu (a video clip of the Landrieu interview), Sen. Trent Lott, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson about their perception of the government response.

In September, 2005, the format of CNN's NewsNight was changed from 60 to 120 minutes to cover the unusually violent hurricane season; to help distribute some of the increased workload, Cooper was temporarily added as co-anchor to Aaron Brown. This arrangement was reported to have been made permanent the same month by the president of CNN's U.S. operations, Jonathan Klein, who has called Cooper "the anchorperson of the future."

Following the addition of Cooper, the ratings for NewsNight increased significantly; Klein remarked that "[Cooper's] name has been on the tip of everyone's tongue." To further capitalize on this, Klein announced a major programming shakeup on November 2, 2005. Cooper's AC360 program would be expanded to 2 hours and shifted into the 10pm ET slot formerly held by NewsNight, with the third hour of Wolf Blitzer's The Situation Room filling in Cooper's former 7pm ET slot. With "no options" left for him to host shows, Aaron Brown left CNN, ostensibly after having "mutually agreed" with Jonathan Klein on the matter.

Continuing Coverage

Other Work

• Cooper is a current Contributing Editor of Details magazine.
• In October 2005 it was announced that he signed a US $1 Million contract to write a memoir for HarperCollins detailing his "life as a journalist and human being in Sri Lanka, Africa, Iraq and Louisiana/Mississippi" over the previous year. Most of Cooper's proceeds will be donated to charity.
• Recently, Cooper has been interviewing Oprah Winfrey several times. They have also been doing several side projects. This has fuelled a rumour that Winfrey and Cooper are planning to make a movie together.

Awards

CNN's biographical entry for Cooper lists several awards:

• A National Headliners Award for his tsunami coverage;
• An Emmy Award for his contribution to ABC's coverage of Princess Diana's funeral;
• A Silver Plaque from the Chicago International Film Festival for his report from Sarajevo on the Bosnian civil war;
• A Bronze Telly for his coverage of famine in Somalia;
• Bronze Award from the National Educational Film and Video Festival for a report on political Islam;
• A GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding TV Journalism for his 20/20 Downtown report on high school athlete Corey Johnson."

Facts & Factoids

• Cooper is a self-described "news junkie", having been one "since I was in utero".
• Cooper was photographed as a baby by Diane Arbus for a Harper's Bazaar Valentine issue; apparently not initially pleased with the result, Cooper's mother refused its publication at first, but eventually changed her mind. Following Arbus' suicide in 1971, the image was selected to open a retrospective of her photography at the Museum of Modern Art in 1972.
• He modeled for Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and Macy's from age 10 to 13.
• At age 17, he went on a survival trip to southern Africa during which time he contracted malaria and required hospitalization in Kenya.
• Cooper started getting gray hair around age 20, and was completely gray by age 35. In his Details column in August 2003, he stated, "Going gray is like ejaculation. You know it can happen prematurely, but when it actually does, it's a total shock." [1]
• It is claimed that Cooper "doesn't drink hot beverages."
• He sometimes goes by the nickname "Andy."
• Regarding his appearance on Celebrity Jeopardy: "It was called the 'Power Players' edition, though I'm not sure why I was in it because I'm neither a 'playa' nor a person of power. The experience really made me realize how much of a loser I am, because of how much I got into it. I mean, it's kind of a no-win proposition. In what I do you're supposed to know a certain amount of things, and there you are exposing yourself to ridicule for not knowing stuff. I didn't consider it that much in advance, but that morning I woke up and was like 'What have I got myself into?' But I feel OK about it now."
• He was once a judge on Iron Chef America.
• Cooper was among the top ten men on Vanity Fair 's international best-dressed list for 2004.
• He has been featured in Maxim and Esquire magazines.
• His height is reported to be 5' 10" (1.78 m).
• Cooper currently lives in New York City.
• He has a pet Welsh Springer Spaniel named Molly. Previously he also had a dog named Ozzie.
• He has been named as one of the Sexiest Men Alive in 2005 by People.

Discussion of Sexuality

Some in the gay community believe that Cooper's sexual orientation is an "open-secret" and want him to publicly 'come out'. It has been further claimed, e.g. on blogACTIVE, that discussion of Cooper's sexuality is increasingly seen as a liability to his career and so is no longer acknowledged; "his handlers at CNN [are] known to call sites and ask editors to delete references to Anderson Cooper being gay." Blogger Andy Towle referred to Cooper as "the most openly closeted gay man in America" after reading a New York Magazine article which reported on the matter as follows:

There has been a lot of chatter on the Internet about the fact that Cooper may or may not be gay, and Village Voice columnist Michael Musto has taken pleasure in quoting the gay magazine Metrosource, which has referred to Cooper as “the openly gay news anchor.” It has been assumed in certain circles in New York partly because he lives what looks to some to be a gay social life. He’s often seen at parties with Barry Diller, and he’s friends with the lead singer from the outré gay rock band the Scissor Sisters. And then there was the tempest in a teapot regarding a slightly heated interview last fall with Jerry Falwell about gay marriage. Some Cooper-obsessed bloggers insist that the anchor outed himself on the air, taking the gay side of the debate and saying, “We pay taxes.” They claim CNN originally posted a transcript with the “we” and then later changed it to “You pay taxes.” Cooper has maintained all along that he said “you.” When I bring up the sexuality issue with Cooper, he says, “You know, I understand why people might be interested. But I just don’t talk about my personal life. It’s a decision I made a long time ago, before I ever even knew anyone would be interested in my personal life. The whole thing about being a reporter is that you’re supposed to be an observer and to be able to adapt with any group you’re in, and I don’t want to do anything that threatens that.”

External links

• Anderson Cooper 360°

Articles

• May 11, 2004: "So What Do You Do, Anderson Cooper?" from Media Bistro
• August 16, 2005: "My brother's suicide" from CNN
• September 12, 2005: "An Anchor Who Reports Disaster News With a Heart on His Sleeve" from the New York Times
• September 19, 2005: "Unanchored" from New York Magazine
• September 29, 2005: "CNN programs Cooper boost" from Variety
• October 12, 2005: "Anderson Cooper Memoir Goes to HarperCollins in $1 Million Deal" from The Book Standard
• November 2, 2005: "CNN Ousts Aaron Brown and Gives Slot to Anderson Cooper" from the New York Times

Profiles

• Anderson Cooper on About.com
• CNN Anchors & Reporters: Anderson Cooper
• Anderson Cooper at the Internet Movie Database
• Anderson Cooper on the Notable Names Database
• Twoop Timeline for Anderson Cooper