CNN Press Release: Brianna Keilar is joining CNN’s White House team, it was announced today by David Bohrman, senior vice president of programming and Washington bureau chief. Keilar begins her new assignment with the White House unit later this month.

“Brianna is an outstanding addition to the White House team,” said Bohrman. “She has distinguished herself with exceptional coverage of the 111th Congress and her new beat will better position the network for the 2012 election season.”

Previously, Keilar served as a congressional correspondent, responsible for covering the activities of both the U.S. House and Senate. In that role, she earned the National Press Foundation’s Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress for her fall 2008 coverage of the $700 billion bank bailout. Prior to covering Congress, Keilar served as a general assignment correspondent for the network, reporting on a wide-range of stories, including the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, where she was the first CNN correspondent on the ground.

Keilar first joined the network as a correspondent for CNN Newsource, where she provided breaking news coverage and reported from the nation’s capital for approximately 800 CNN Newsource partner stations. She joined Newsource from CBS News where she served as an anchor, reporter and producer for a CBS newscast that aired on mtvU, MTV's college network. She was also a fill-in anchor on CBS News’ overnight newscast, Up to the Minute, and a freelance reporter for CBS Evening News Weekend Edition.

Prior to working for CBS, Keilar was a general assignment reporter in Yakima, Wash., for the CNN and CBS affiliate, KIMA-TV. During that same time, she also worked in radio as a morning show personality and weekend news reader. Keilar began her journalism career as a production assistant and intern at KTVU-TV, a CNN and FOX affiliate in San Francisco.

Keilar graduated Phi Beta Kappa with bachelor’s degrees in mass communications and psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.

In the wake of its highly acclaimed coverage of the presidential election campaign, CNN is redeploying some of its Washington-based correspondents in preparation for the new Obama administration and the incoming 111th Congress.

“During the election, CNN’s political reporters established themselves as the class of television news, both cable and broadcast,” said David Bohrman, CNN’s senior vice president and D.C. bureau chief. “Now we’re positioning them in key roles that will ensure the most thorough and informative coverage as President Obama and Congress tackle the thorniest problems America has faced in our lifetimes.”

The changes come on the heels of the announcement that CNN’s lead political anchor Wolf Blitzer will remain with the network through the next presidential election cycle and chief national correspondent John King will anchor a four-hour programming block on Sundays starting in January.

The noteworthy changes include:
· Ed Henry, who has provided comprehensive coverage of the Obama transition,becomes senior White House correspondent after coveringthe past two years of the George W. Bush White House and spending two years as CNN’s congressional correspondent. Suzanne Malveaux, who distinguished herself with exceptional coverage of the Obama presidential campaign and reported a two-hour documentary on the president-elect, returns to the White House. She will also serve as a primary substitute anchor for The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.Boston bureau chief and correspondent Dan Lothian, who reported extensively from the campaign trail in both 2004 and 2008, will become a White House correspondent as well.
· Dana Bash, who broke numerous exclusives while covering the Republican primaries and the McCain campaign, is named senior congressional correspondent. Bash has covered Congress for nearly a decade and was honored with the prestigious Dirksen Award in 2002. She will be joined on Capitol Hill by Brianna Keilar, who has served as a general assignment correspondent for the network for nearly three years and covered Capitol Hill and the White House during the election campaign.
· Jessica Yellin, one of the standouts of CNN’s presidential campaign coverage, becomes national political correspondent. In addition to The Situation Room, Campbell Brown: No Bias, No Bull and John King’s Sunday block, Yellin will file daily reports for CNN’s prime-time programming analyzing the most important stories on politics, policy and culture.
· Jill Dougherty is named foreign affairs correspondent. Dougherty,who covered the Clinton White House for CNN and then served as Moscow bureau chief and correspondent and managing editor for Asia/Pacific based in Hong Kong, will track Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton’s stewardship of American foreign policy.
· Correspondent Chris Lawrence, a veteran of the Navy Reserve who has spent four years as a general assignment correspondent in CNN’s Chicago and Los Angeles bureaus, becomes a Pentagon correspondent.
· Zain Verjee becomes news anchor for The Situation Room and will also file special reports for the program. While serving as CNN’s State Department correspondent for the past two years, Verjee traveled with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to more than a dozen countries, including Israel, Libya, Russia and South Korea. She also covered the violent conflicts in Kenya, her native country.
· Elaine Quijano shifts from the White House to general assignment correspondent to cover other Beltway issues while continuing to cover the White House. She will be joined by Kate Bolduan, who has been reporting for the network for months and officiallymoves from CNN’s Newsource affiliate service.

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