Why did former CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin suddenly quit the network?
And how did her battles with COVID change her outlook on life?
Keep watching to find out all the details about this intrepid newscaster.
On April 3, 2020, Brooke Baldwin revealed on Instagram that she had a symptomatic case of
COVID-19. Noting that she'd followed public health guidelines diligently, she shared how the disease
presented itself rapidly and left her suffering from, quote, "chills, aches, fever." After
enduring two weeks of symptoms, she recovered and shared her experience in a CNN column.
In addition to losing her sense of taste and smell, Baldwin slept for 10 to 12 hours a day,
and suffered from swollen glands. Worst of all, however, was the depression. She wrote,
"Evenings would bring on an eerie melancholy. I would often cry,
unable to stave off the sense of dread and isolation I felt about what was to come."
Calling the illness, quote, "relentless, scary, and lonely,"
she conceded that she was actually fortunate because she didn't have any breathing issues,
and learned many things from the experience. She wrote,
"First, that clarity comes from being quiet and listening to our feelings.
Second, that connection is more vital to our health and happiness than we might care to admit."
"Yes! You guys, I feel so much better!"
If you follow Brooke Baldwin on Instagram,
you know she's a fitness buff. Whether it's trying goat yoga, climbing Runyon Canyon,
or hiking at Boynton Canyon Vortex, she's game for pretty much anything.
She wrote in Self that it all started when she picked up gymnastics at age 4,
then pursued swimming, softball, cheerleading, and shot put in high school. After being bullied for
her appearance, she turned to more exercise, and found that it made her feel strong and powerful,
calling it, quote, "a much-needed confidence boost in a cut-throat career."
Once she signed with CNN, she found that exercise brought
her peace and confidence. Calling herself a, quote, "work in progress," she wrote,
"After doing these workouts consistently for a few years (even virtually through the pandemic),
I am healing from years of feeling I wasn't thin enough or that my body
wasn't fully mine." No backup plan
On February 16, 2021, Brooke Baldwin opened her show with a major surprise,
announcing that she was quitting the network after 13 years.
And what will the focus of the "next chapter" of her life be about?
"What I love the most about my work: amplifying the lives of extraordinary Americans
and putting my passion for storytelling to good use."
She also revealed that she felt she had more to accomplish outside of CNN,
pointing to the two years she had spent working on her first book, "Huddle: ​​How Women Unlock
Their Collective Power." But she also revealed that she didn't have any backup plan, saying,
"No, I don't have a job I'm jumping right into and yes — yes — I'm feeling very vulnerable."
It's something she reiterated when she was tapped to guest host "The Ellen
DeGeneres Show" in March 2021. During her opening monologue,
she compared her big career move to doing, quote, "a backflip off the high dive," quipping,
"I'm just hoping there is water in the pool."
Baldwin went on to tell viewers that she made her decision after a lot of deliberation,
but confessed,
"Here's what I didn't put a lot of thought into: what I'm actually going to do next. [...] "I
actually honestly don't know what I'm going to do. [...] Wish me luck on my next chapter."
In April 2021, Brooke Baldwin published that first book,
"Huddle: ​​How Women Unlock Their Collective Power. According to publisher HarperCollins,
the book explores how groups of women, quote, "provide each other support, empowerment,
inspiration, and the strength to solve problems or enact meaningful change,."
As Baldwin told People, she was inspired to write it because the stories she wanted to
tell about such women weren't covered by the media. Speaking with Bustle,
she added that, quote, "huddling has been happening for decades below the surface"
aso she wanted to bring it out into the light to acknowledge its value.
She did just that by interviewing women and sharing her own experiences, and along the way,
she also inspired herself. As she told People, working on her debut book nudged her to leave CNN.
"I don't know if it was a combination of turning 40
or having done this job for a decade or it was being in the deep end with these women,
interviewing them — it was different from my day job. [..] I had this slow realization:
How can I hold space with these women and not be the bravest possible version of myself?"
Brooke Baldwin didn't hold back when she joined Ms. Magazine's "On the
Issues" podcast in April 2021 and told host Michele Goodwin that CNN has a gender bias.
"The most influential anchors on our network — the highest-paid — are men. My bosses,
my executives, are men. The person who oversees CNN dayside is a man,
and my executive producer for 10 years is a man, so I have been surrounded by a lot of men."
Conceding that things are beginning to change,
she stressed the importance of having women in leadership roles
as well as in the anchor chair at news networks and warned about the wrong kind of change.
"There's no way we will have progress if a bunch of white women are winning. It's brown women,
Black women, Asian women [...] we have to see them reflected in our stories.
It's getting better, but we still have a bit of a ways to go."
Indeed, an investigation by The Wrap revealed back in 2018 that CNN might have what they called,
quote, "a woman problem." After analyzing weekday news programming on cable TV,
the outlet concluded that CNN had had far fewer women in on-air positions than Fox News
and MSNBC. Not only did CNN have, quote, "half as many female solo anchors" as its competitors,
but none of them worked during primetime hours.
In January 2018, Brooke Baldwin introduced her eight-part online
CNN series "American Women," proclaiming, quote, "2017 was the year of #MeToo".
Focusing on trailblazing women who pushed boundaries, Baldwin interviewed everyone from
Ashley Graham to Issa Rae and Betty White for the series, which she spent a year working on.
Explaining why the passion project was so important to her, she expressed her hope
that the stories she was telling would have a positive impact on the future.
"In order for this movement to continue, for equality to exist,
we must never forget the great changes of history have always come through persistence and belief."
Speaking with People, Baldwin revealed that she initially had the idea for the show after covering
the 2016 presidential election and attending the groundbreaking Women's March in 2017. She said,
"I listened. And what I heard was female voices in record numbers. [...] I saw
thousands of women ... who'd come to DC to speak out and speak up. I made a decision
to dedicate this next chapter of my career to women like these."
As for the importance of Time's Up, she continued,
"I salute all these women (and men too!) who are speaking up ... whose
voices haven't been heard in this country. But that is going to change."
In May 2018, Brooke Baldwin tied the knot with British producer James Fletcher in a
ceremony at The Barn at Liberty Farms in Ghent, New York. Sharing their meet-cute with People
earlier that year, the anchor recalled how they first encountered one another in 2015,
quote, "at a holiday party." She then spent the following year falling in love. She gushed,
"Took me 36 years to find him, but boy oh boy, he was worth the wait."
According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
the pair actually had their first dinner date the night they met as Baldwin was
flying to Atlanta for the holidays. After that, she invited Fletcher to New Orleans,
where she was covering the New Year's Eve celebration for CNN — and the rest is history.
She said that she knew he was Mister Right from the moment they met, and that his flexibility with
her hectic work schedule helped them succeed as a couple. In 2017, Jump to 2017 and Fletcher popped
the question during a trip to Kauai, Hawaii, to celebrate Baldwin's birthday. She said,
"All I wanted on my birthday was to be on a surfboard. I got a little bit more than that."
"CNN Newsroom" viewers were taken by surprise in January 2019 when the show, which was being hosted
by Brooke Baldwin, came back from a commercial break with Brianna Keilar behind the news desk.
Concerned fans took to twitter to express their worry. Baldwin finally made an announcement
herself, explaining that she had to leave due to the sudden onset of an ocular migraine. She wrote,
"I get 'em about once a year. And in 20 years of doing live TV...
that had never happened on set till today. I suddenly couldn't see."
Following her public health scare, Baldwin told People that she got her, quote,
"first migraine on my first day of work in TV in 2001." She said that when the migraines begin,
her vision starts to blur and she gets a visual aura, which is a signal to
drop everything and take action, including medication, and going into a darkened room.
She said,
"It's scary, but I'm fortunate they don't happen way more often or make me nauseous."
While working at CNN, Brooke Baldwin built a special relationship with a security guard
named Anthony Anderson. As she explained while guest-hosting
"The Ellen DeGeneres Show" in March 2021, he was in charge of walking
her out of the building and to her car after every shift for safety purposes.
Calling him, quote, "someone who makes me smile each and every day,"
she shared the profound impact Anderson had on her, telling viewers,
"Every single day at the end of my show, I see him and I ask him how he's doing,
and every single day he says to me, 'Brooke, I'm fantastic and only improving."
Just one day before Baldwin announced she was leaving CNN,
Anderson gifted her a sweatshirt with that slogan printed on it. Baldwin told
viewers that the gesture moved her, and when Anderson called into the show from his home,
she had to fight back tears as she said, "You touched my heart."
She also showed off her new swag on Instagram, sharing how they'd often talked. She wrote,
"Ant is a rare gem of a human. A hard worker with an
incredible attitude. I haven’t known him long, but I just know that to be true."
The feeling was mutual. Recalling the first day they met,
Anderson told "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" viewers,
"You asked me my name [...] and you repeated it. That made me feel special. That made me
feel more than an escort, more than a security. [...] It meant everything to me, so thank you."
"I am filled with emotion and gratitude."
It pays to be a CNN anchor! Just ask Wolf Blitzer, who is said to make $5 million a year,
Erin Burnett, who reportedly earns $6 million, or Anderson Cooper, who cashes in a $12 million
paycheck. Brooke Baldwin's earnings appear to be right up there, too — according to
Celebrity Net Worth, she was making $4 million a year as a primetime host on CNN.
Meanwhile, Baldwin's overall net worth reportedly clocks in at $10 million and likely includes some
earnings from her book deal, although her gig as an author may not have been as lucrative as she
had hoped.Though it made it on to the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, the number
slumped quickly, and by November 2021 it was ranked just 116,149 on the Amazon book rankings.
Still, Baldwin has plenty of greenbacks. It's unclear whether Baldwin buys or rents,
but one look at her old SoHo apartment, which she moved out of in November 2020,
proves she's not struggling for cash. According to Zumper,
the average one-bedroom apartment in that neighborhood rents for
$4,200 a month while the median sale price in the area, according to PropertyShark, is $2.9 million.
So whatever she ends up doing next, she'll do it in some comfort! Good luck, Brooke!
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