Anderson Cooper's Impact On American Journalism

For decades the world has relied on journalism as a form of gathering news and information. There are different types of journalism, including: investigative, news, reviews, columns and feature writing. The way people acquired this information has changed over the years and for the better of course. Technology has allowed for new innovations in the industry and better ways of transmitting news to the world. However, the main purpose of journalism is defined by something more basic, journalism focuses on the function news plays in the lives of people. Its goal is to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments (Campbell,
Martin,
& Fabos, 2012). For the purpose of this paper, we will be discussing the life of a very honorable journalist, Anderson Cooper.
Anderson Cooper was born on June 3, 1967 in New York City, NY as Anderson Hays
Cooper. He was born to Wyatt Emory Cooper, a writer, and Gloria Vanderbilt, an entrepreneur.
Early in his life Cooper was exposed to his mother’s glamorous lifestyle and the media. He
was only three years old when he appeared as a guest in “the tonight show” and as a baby he was photographed for the cover of “Harper's Bazaar” magazine. Cooper also enjoyed a brief career in modeling, when he was only 10 years old; he modeled with ford models and appeared in ad campaigns for companies such as Macy's and Ralph Lauren. In the early 1980’s, he attended
Dalton’s school, a private institute in New York City. After culminating his studies at Dalton, he traveled to Africa for several months. In 1985, he went on to attend Yale University, where he majored in political science. During this time, he interned at the Central intelligence agency
(CIA) for two months, but then decided that was not something he was interested in and opted into going to journalism. A year after graduating from college, he worked as a reporter for a
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short while and then moved to Vietnam, where he studied the Vietnamese language at the
University of Hanoi.
Cooper’s first job was as a fact checker for Channel One, which produces news segments to be broadcast in schools around the country. Not enjoying his job too much, he obtained a fake press pass and went to Myanmar and parts of Africa, where he created a news segment that he later sold to Channel one, which eventually lead him to becoming a chief international correspondent for Channel one. Due to the popularity of his reports, Cooper became a correspondent for ABC news in 1995. He then was promoted as the co-anchor of World News
Now program in 1999. Cooper soon left this position to start working on a new reality show for
ABC called The Mole, a competition in which the contestants work together to add money to a pot that only one of them will win in the end. In 2001, after the terrorist attacks of September 11,
Cooper had to go back to the news and had to leave the game show after its second season.
January 2002, Cooper then was recruited by CNN as a correspondent and substitute anchor. He started by working alongside Paula Zahn, an American journalist and newscaster who has been an anchor of ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, and CNN. They worked together, anchoring
‘American Morning’, which then became CNN”s weekend prime-time.
In 2003, CNN gave Cooper the opportunity to start his own news show called Anderson
Cooper 360°, where he broadcasted the world’s major stories for over a decade, the show also includes analysis from experts on the issues presented. Due to its rapid success, Cooper had the privileged to anchor important news stories such as Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in Sri Lanka, the Cedar revolution, the death of Pope John Paul II, the Boston marathon bombing and the royal
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grow up worrying about his family’s wealth and this has to do a lot with his father, Wyatt Emory
Cooper who grew up really poor in Mississippi.
Growing up Cooper was influenced by two tragic events that have shaped him into what he is today. In 1977, when he was only eleven years old, Cooper’s father died in an open-heart surgery after several heart attacks. A couple years later when he was a senior in college, he suffers another tragic lost and this was the death of his brother. Cooper had an older brother named Carter who suffered from depression. Carter committed suicide by jumping out of the
14th-floor window of their mother's New York City apartment in front of her. As a college graduate and after losing his brother, Cooper decided he wanted to go into journalism. He was mostly interested in the war zone, which somehow connected to his family’s tragedies. Covering wars were logical to him because he was still questioning why his brother did what he did. In an interview, he expressed that after his brother’s death, he became interested in questions
of survival, such as why “some people survive and others don't".
Regarding his personal life, after years of privacy about his sexual orientation, in July
2012 Cooper announced he is a gay man. He is in a relationship with bar owner Benjamin
Maisani. Maisani runs the following bars: the "Eastern Bloc" (E. Village), "Bedlam" (E.
Village), "Atlas Social Club" (Hell's Kitchen) and "LOVEGUN" (Williamsburgh) in New York.
The couple plans to marry in the near future. His sexuality has not been of any disadvantage for him; instead Cooper has gained fans of both genders due to his great work and also because of his attractive looks. In 2005, he was named as one of the sexiest men alive by People magazine.
Overall, because of his high journalistic standards and rapid success, Cooper himself became a household name. Known for his boyish, young-looking face, prematurely silver hair, steely blue eyes, golden voice and impeccably tailored suits, Cooper continues to attract many people today.