Omar Jimenez, award-winning news correspondent, officially joins CNN as an anchor

The Emmy award-winning anchor joins CNN with nearly 10 years of experience covering major national and international stories for affiliates.

After leading award-winning coverage for various affiliates, Omar Jimenez is officially an anchor at CNN.

On Wednesday, September 10, the 31-year-old anchor announced in an Instagram post that he was joining CNN as an anchor.

“I’m officially an anchor at CNN. Some exciting things in the works! The hustle continues,” the Emmy-winning correspondent wrote in the caption of the post that included a black and white photo of him. 

Jimenez, a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University who hails from Worcester, Massachusetts, joins the news network in New York after being based at CNN’s Chicago affiliate since 2019. During his tenure in Chicago, he helped lead CNN’s coverage of several major national and international stories, including the murder of George Floyd, the first major COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, the death of Kobe Bryant, and more.

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He made headlines while covering the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 when he and his team were handcuffed and arrested live on air by the Minnesota State Patrol. In 2021, his tireless work covering the story won him the National News & Documentary Emmy Award.

His journey with the network began in 2017 when he joined the affiliate Newsource based in Washington, D.C. While there, he covered major breaking national and international news both in the country and in France and Mexico. 

Just three days before his big announcement, he was on the ground in Chicago covering protests in front of Trump Tower. 

“We’re right at the front of a major protest in downtown Chicago that is right outside Trump Tower here in the city,” he reported in a video on Instagram as he stood by while hundreds of protestors made their way past him, chanting loudly. 

“Part of what they are protesting here, as you hear them cheering and really booing, in some cases, outside of Trump Tower, is they are protesting ‘No Trump, No troops,’” he continued. “That is obviously in response to the threat that the President has made to deploy National Guard troops here in the city of Chicago, but this is also in response to the heightened threats of more immigration enforcement here in the city.”