John Donvan
Encyclopedia
John Donvan is a correspondent
for ABC News
. A list of his career postings includes: Chief White House Correspondent, Chief Moscow
Correspondent, Amman
Bureau Chief, Jerusalem Correspondent, London Correspondent, Eastern Europe Correspondent, and, most recently, a regular correspondent for Nightline.
in New York City
and graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College
and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
. He and his wife, Dr. Ranit Mishori (a physician and health reporter), have a son, Ben, and a daughter, Noa.
and the rest of the Arab
world.
From 1985 to 1988, he worked for CNN
, as a London
-based correspondent, covering Europe
, the Middle East
, and Africa
. His live reporting on the U.S. bombing of Libya
was likened to the work of Edward R. Murrow
by the New York Daily News
.
Donvan rejoined ABC in 1988, and has been there ever since. Based in London
, and later Moscow
, he covered nearly all of the major news events overseas through the 1980s and the 1990s. This includes; the collapse of Communism
(he was in Red Square
the night the Soviet flag came down, and in Romania
when Nicolae Ceauşescu
was arrested); the Iran–Iraq War; both Persian Gulf Wars; two Royal Weddings; the assassination of Anwar Sadat
; the bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut
; and the end of the nuclear arms race
.
Donvan returned to New York in 1993, where he contributed to ABC News' magazine programs and World News Tonight, and occasionally served as an anchor on Good Morning America
and weekend news broadcasts. In 1997, he was assigned to the network's Washington, DC bureau, and the White House beat, covering the campaign finance scandal and the president's travels abroad. He joined Nightline in 1998 and continues as one of that program's small cadre of correspondents. He was an occasional substitute anchor for Ted Koppel
, and hosted many interviews for Nightlines production of UpClose.
In October 2006, Donvan was reporter on site of the Amish school shootings in Lancaster, Pennsylvania
. While answering followup questions from Nightline anchor Terry Moran
after his report, Donvan unexpectedly paused and wept momentarily before gradually (although not completely) regaining his composure to finish his response. Somewhat taken aback, Moran quickly concluded the emotional segment.
Donvan also serves as moderator of Intelligence Squared, US, a forum that gathers together experts to debate propositions concerning serious topics of public interest in Oxford Union
-style debates which may be heard on NPR
, and seen on Bloomberg TV or YouTube
.
s, several Overseas Press Club Awards, two Cine Golden Eagles, and has been honored by the National Association of Black Journalists
, the Committee of 100, and the Media Action Network for Asian-Americans.
Correspondent
A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is a journalist or commentator, or more general speaking, an agent who contributes reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company, from a remote, often distant, location. A foreign correspondent is stationed in a foreign...
for ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
. A list of his career postings includes: Chief White House Correspondent, Chief Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
Correspondent, Amman
Amman
Amman is the capital of Jordan. It is the country's political, cultural and commercial centre and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The Greater Amman area has a population of 2,842,629 as of 2010. The population of Amman is expected to jump from 2.8 million to almost...
Bureau Chief, Jerusalem Correspondent, London Correspondent, Eastern Europe Correspondent, and, most recently, a regular correspondent for Nightline.
Personal life
Donvan attended Regis High SchoolRegis High School (New York City)
Regis High School is a private Jesuit university-preparatory school for academically gifted Roman Catholic young men located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Annual class enrollment is limited to approximately 135 male students from the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut tri-state area...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is one of Columbia's graduate and professional schools. It offers three degree programs: Master of Science in journalism , Master of Arts in journalism and a Ph.D. in communications...
. He and his wife, Dr. Ranit Mishori (a physician and health reporter), have a son, Ben, and a daughter, Noa.
Career history
Donvan began his career at age 25 for ABC Radio as a foreign correspondent in 1980. In 1982, the network promoted him to television. He was assigned to Jerusalem on the West BankWest Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...
and the rest of the Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
world.
From 1985 to 1988, he worked for CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, as a London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
-based correspondent, covering Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, and Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
. His live reporting on the U.S. bombing of Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
was likened to the work of Edward R. Murrow
Edward R. Murrow
Edward Roscoe Murrow, KBE was an American broadcast journalist. He first came to prominence with a series of radio news broadcasts during World War II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States and Canada.Fellow journalists Eric Sevareid, Ed Bliss, and Alexander Kendrick...
by the New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
.
Donvan rejoined ABC in 1988, and has been there ever since. Based in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, and later Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, he covered nearly all of the major news events overseas through the 1980s and the 1990s. This includes; the collapse of Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
(he was in Red Square
Red Square
Red Square is a city square in Moscow, Russia. The square separates the Kremlin, the former royal citadel and currently the official residence of the President of Russia, from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod...
the night the Soviet flag came down, and in Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
when Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
was arrested); the Iran–Iraq War; both Persian Gulf Wars; two Royal Weddings; the assassination of Anwar Sadat
Anwar Sadat
Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat was the third President of Egypt, serving from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 October 1981...
; the bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut
Beirut
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...
; and the end of the nuclear arms race
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
.
Donvan returned to New York in 1993, where he contributed to ABC News' magazine programs and World News Tonight, and occasionally served as an anchor on Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
and weekend news broadcasts. In 1997, he was assigned to the network's Washington, DC bureau, and the White House beat, covering the campaign finance scandal and the president's travels abroad. He joined Nightline in 1998 and continues as one of that program's small cadre of correspondents. He was an occasional substitute anchor for Ted Koppel
Ted Koppel
Edward James "Ted" Koppel is an English-born American broadcast journalist, best known as the anchor for Nightline from the program's inception in 1980 until his retirement in late 2005. After leaving Nightline, Koppel worked as managing editor for the Discovery Channel before resigning in 2008...
, and hosted many interviews for Nightlines production of UpClose.
In October 2006, Donvan was reporter on site of the Amish school shootings in Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Lancaster is a city in the south-central part of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is the county seat of Lancaster County and one of the older inland cities in the United States, . With a population of 59,322, it ranks eighth in population among Pennsylvania's cities...
. While answering followup questions from Nightline anchor Terry Moran
Terry Moran
Terry Moran is the co-anchor of Nightline.-Biography:Moran was born in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from Lawrence University in 1982.-Professional career:-Career as Correspondent:...
after his report, Donvan unexpectedly paused and wept momentarily before gradually (although not completely) regaining his composure to finish his response. Somewhat taken aback, Moran quickly concluded the emotional segment.
Donvan also serves as moderator of Intelligence Squared, US, a forum that gathers together experts to debate propositions concerning serious topics of public interest in Oxford Union
Oxford Union
The Oxford Union Society, commonly referred to simply as the Oxford Union, is a debating society in the city of Oxford, Britain, whose membership is drawn primarily but not exclusively from the University of Oxford...
-style debates which may be heard on NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
, and seen on Bloomberg TV or YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
.
Awards
Donvan has won three Emmy AwardEmmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
s, several Overseas Press Club Awards, two Cine Golden Eagles, and has been honored by the National Association of Black Journalists
National Association of Black Journalists
The National Association of Black Journalists is an organization of African American journalists, students, and media professionals. Founded in 1975 in Washington, D.C...
, the Committee of 100, and the Media Action Network for Asian-Americans.
Sources
- "John Donvan", abcnews.com (undated, but last modified December 13, 2005). Accessed March 20, 2006; re-checked March 30, 2007.