Lynn Sherr

  • Award-Winning ABC News 20/20 Correspondent

A Peabody Award Winner, Lynn Sherr has tackled all sorts of controversial and groundbreaking topics in her investigative work for ABC News’ 20/20. Ms. Sherr has an astounding capacity to illuminate and make clear the murkiest global, domestic, and even personal issues with her deft journalistic skills.

 

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Lynn Sherr covers a wide range of topics, specializing in women’s issues and social changes. She has an astounding capacity to illuminate and make clear the murkiest global, domestic, and even personal issues with her deft journalistic skills.

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Books by Lynn Sherr
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Biography

Award-winning broadcaster and best-selling author Lynn Sherr spent more than thirty years at ABC News, including more than twenty as a correspondent with the ABC Newsmagazine 20/20. Since she left ABC in 2008, she has been freelancing on a variety of platforms, from print to TV to digital. Her newest book, SALLY RIDE: America’s First Woman in Space (published in June 2014) was a New York Times Science Bestseller, was named one of the Washington Post’s Best Books of the Year, and was a Finalist in the Goodreads Choice Awards for history and biography.

Throughout her career, Sherr has covered a wide range of stories, specializing in women's issues and social change, as well as investigative reports. Her numerous awards include an Emmy, two American Women in Radio and Television Commendation awards, a Gracie Award, and, among other honors, a George Foster Peabody Award.

Prior to her ABC assignment at 20/20, Sherr was a national correspondent for ABC News, where she was also part of the network’s political team for every election cycle through 2000. Sherr also reported on the NASA space shuttle program from its inception in 1981 through the Challenger explosion in 1986, anchoring almost every mission from launch to landing. She is a graduate of Wellesley College, where she served as a trustee.

Before going to ABC in 1977, Sherr was a reporter for WNET-TV in New York and WETA-TV in Washington, D.C., both public television stations. Prior to that, she reported for WCBS-TV in New York, and The Associated Press in New York and Condé Nast Publications.

Sherr is the author of SWIM: Why We Love the Water (2012); her memoir, Outside the Box: My Unscripted Life of Love, Loss and Television News, published in September 2006; the biography, Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words; and co-author of Susan B. Anthony Slept Here: A Guide to American Women's Landmarks, and 10 editions of “The Women's Calendar.” Her bestselling book, Tall Blondes, offered a perceptive and highly praised look at one of wildlife's most endearing but little-understood animals — giraffes — and was also the subject of a one-hour documentary for the PBS Nature program. Her bestselling book, America the Beautiful: The Stirring True Story Behind Our Nation’s Favorite Song, came out in 2001. She conceived and co-edited Peter Jennings: A Reporter’s Life, which was published in 2007.

Sherr wrote the Foreword to The Mercury 13: The Untold Story of Thirteen American Women and the Dream of Space Flight and to Smart Women Don’t Retire: They Break Free. She also has served as a Contributing Writer at Parade Magazine, where she did cover stories on President and Mrs. Obama, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Rick Perry, Oprah Winfrey, first lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden; and at More Magazine; wrote columns for The Daily Beast; broadcast for public radio, and has frequently co-hosted PRI’s The Takeaway. She served as a Commissioner on the New York City Commission on Women’s Issues. She is also a member of the selection committee for the John Chancellor Awards.

Lynn Sherr is a popular lecturer and public speaker at many venues, including women’s groups, journalism classes and meetings of cancer professionals.