Contessa Brewer Born March 16, 1974 (1974-03-16) (age 35) Parsonsfield, Maine Education B.S., Newhouse School, Syracuse University Occupation MSNBC News anchor Notable credit(s) Verdict with Dan Abrams

Contessa Brewer in action at the site of the collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge.

Contessa Brewer (born March 16, 1974 in Parsonsfield, Maine) is an American news anchor, and currently working for MSNBC.

[edit] Biography

She graduated from Sacopee Valley High School in Hiram, Maine in 1992. She joined MSNBC in September 2003 after working for WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as a weekend anchor and general assignment reporter. She has also worked for KMIR-TV in Palm Springs, California from 1997 to 1999, and KRNV-TV in Reno, Nevada.^[1] KMIR and WTMJ-TV are both owned by Journal Communications.

Brewer, in the spring of 2005, served briefly as a news reader on the "Imus in the Morning" radio show, which was syndicated nationally. Her tenure was brief; she became embroiled in a public feud with Don Imus after the New York Post published a gossip item^[2] in which she was allegedly overheard disparaging the radio personality. Imus replied, on air, with his own disparaging remarks directed at Brewer.^[2] She later appeared as the news reader on Verdict with Dan Abrams before its cancellation in 2008. She and Dan Abrams would discuss the "Winners and Losers" of the day, as well as reading responses from readers. She hosts MSNBC Live programming weekdays at 2pm with rotating co-anchors.

She graduated from S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.^[1] She holds a bachelor of science degree in broadcast journalism.

Brewer has a history of on-air bloopers. In August 2007, she humorously announced, "I am not gay", when reading a teleprompter report on former senator Larry Craig^[3]. In January 2009, Brewer was caught applying lip gloss during a newscast^[4]. On October 21, 2009 , she introduced the Reverend Jesse Jackson as "Reverend Al Sharpton". She claimed that the teleprompter had the wrong name on it.^[5] On November 10, 2009, while reading the news for the Morning Meeting with Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC, she referred to Florida U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio as the "great white hope." Rubio, who is Hispanic, was called the "great right hope" by the Club for Growth, whose endorsement was the subject of the newsbrief Brewer was reading.^[6]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• MSNBC profile
• Contessa Brewer on Twitter
• Contessa Brewer at the Internet Movie Database

This biographical article related to television journalism in the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e