Brooke Baldwin is returning to CNN’s homepage to make sure female voices are heard.
The anchor, who typically holds forth on CNN between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. each weekday, is launching a second run of her digital series, “American Woman,” devoted to stories of women who are breaking conventions.The newest iteration is called “American Woman in Politics.” The first run, which appeared earlier this year, profiled well-known women like Sheryl Crow, Betty White, Tracy Reese and Ashley Graham who had shattered boundaries. The next group of interviews focuses on women who may not be as broadly popular, but who are also blazing new paths.
After the first season of the program, Baldwin and her producers “put our heads together. We read the political tea leaves. Not long ago, I had this feeling based upon what I was reading that one of the stories this fall was going to be the number of women on the ballot,” she said in an interview. “We jumped ahead, producing these full-bodied stories so that they can be viewed in the weeks before November 6th.” The five-part series will stream online and appear in segments during her TV slot starting today.
Launch of the program shows the AT&T-owned cable-news network continuing to hone its interest in digital video. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper has been hosting a series on Facebook Watch, for example, and the company operates a separate company. Great Big Story, devoted to short videos on all kinds of topics ranging from travel to quirky nostalgia.
Among the subjects are Stacey Abrams, the Democrat running to be the first female African-American governor of Georgia, and the series also includes a profile of tens of women running for office in Alabama. “I started digging around in Alabama,” Baldwin added, where “more than 70 black women are running for office, all up and down the ballot.” Each episode lasts between five and 13 minutes. She said she appreciates the extra time the series gives her to delve more deeply into a particular subject or profile,
Baldwin typically does the work for her digital project in her spare time, she says, “We mostly spent weekends in the summer crisscrossing, watching various women in Idaho, Alabama, Georgia and Ohio,” she adds, hoping the stories she tells will inspire viewers from the right and the left and make them more aware of various political races. “There is something in all of these women’s’ stories that everyone will be able to relate to,” Baldwin says.
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