Lynn Sherr is an American broadcast journalist and author, best known as a correspondent for the ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 news magazine 20/20.

Sherr was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

, and attended Lower Merion High School

Lower Merion High School

Lower Merion High School, is an American public high school in Ardmore, a community on the Pennsylvania Main Line.It is the larger of the two high schools in Lower Merion School District, which serves both Lower Merion Township and the Borough of Narberth. It was ranked among the top 60 U.S. high...

 in Ardmore

Ardmore, Pennsylvania

Ardmore is a census-designated place in Delaware and Montgomery counties in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The population was 12,455 at the 2010 census...

. She received a B.A. from Wellesley College.

She was a freelance host at WNET-TV in New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, then staff. She worked for the Associated Press

Associated Press

The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...

 and WCBS-TV

WCBS-TV

WCBS-TV, channel 2, is the flagship station of the CBS television network, located in New York City. The station's studios are located within the CBS Broadcast Center and its transmitter is atop the Empire State Building, both in Midtown Manhattan....

. In 1977, she was the guest host of the MacNeil–Lehrer Report while Robert MacNeil

Robert MacNeil

Robert Breckenridge Ware MacNeil, OC, known sometimes as Robin MacNeil, , is currently a novelist and formerly was a television news anchor and journalist who had paired with Jim Lehrer to create The MacNeil/Lehrer Report in 1975.-Early life:MacNeil was born in Montreal, the son of Margaret...

 was absent, and has hosted a number of PBS

Public Broadcasting Service

The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

 specials. In 1983–85 she was a reporter/editor for Condé Nast

Condé Nast Publications

Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...

.

She received a 1994 George Foster Peabody Award along with producer Alan B. Goldberg for the "Hunger Inside" a 20/20 documentary about extreme anorexia.

Feminism

Sherr is an unabashed feminist. She has twice (in 1989 and 1992) been the recipient of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America's (PPFA) Margaret Sanger Award

Margaret Sanger Awards

The Margaret Sanger Award is a honor awarded annually by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America since 1966. Created to honor the legacy of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and an early advocate of family planning, it is the Federation's highest honor...

 (known as the "Maggie"), which is awarded to journalists for "exceptional coverage of reproductive rights and health care issues" in the view of PPFA. She also hosted PPFA's Maggie Awards luncheon in 2010.

Sherr has rejected calls for a "new feminism", remarking, "What's wrong with the old feminism?" She has criticized Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin

Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...

 for calling herself a feminist, demanding, "What, exactly, has she done legislatively for other women? What paths has she forged?"

Sherr was featured in the Jewish Women's Archive web feature, Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution.

Cancer

She is the author of Outside the Box: A Memoir, published in September 2006, which chronicles her life on and off TV, including her husband's death from cancer as well as her own battle with colon cancer.

Published works

• Susan B. Anthony Slept Here: A Guide to American Women's Landmarks (co-author, 1994)
• Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words (1996)
• Tall Blondes: A Book About Giraffes (1997)
• America the Beautiful: The Stirring True Story Behind Our Nation's Favorite Song (2001).

External links

• ABC News 20/20 profile
• The Giraffe Conservation Foundation http://www.giraffeconservation.org/our_patrons.php where Lynn Sherr is a Founding Patron.