Anne Holt Blackburn was one of 13 children born to a family of sharecroppers in West Tennessee. She graduated from UT in 1973 with a BS in broadcasting and blazed a trail to become lead news anchor at WKRN-TV in Nashville, a position she held for 40 years. She scaled back her workload in 2017 to focus on on-air and community projects for the station, including her signature weekly show, Anne Holt’s Tennessee. As the College of Communication and Information’s 2008 commencement speaker, she shared remarkable insights into her inspiring personal journey as a civil rights and broadcasting pioneer.
She has received many awards and honors, including eight Emmys, the George Foster Peabody Award for the investigative documentary Under the Influence, and the 2007 Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement—the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ highest honor. The Nashville Conference on Community and Justice awarded her the Jerry Thompson Communicator’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994, when she was also the first recipient of CCI’s Donald G. Hileman Distinguished Alumni Award. The first woman, the first African American, and the first news anchor to receive the Distinguished Service Award from the Tennessee Association of Broadcasters, Blackburn has also received UT’s Trailblazer Award for advancing diversity in the newsroom. She was inducted into the first class of the Tennessee Journalism Hall of Fame in 2013 and has made numerous appearances as a news anchor on the ABC TV series Nashville.
Blackburn is a community servant, generously giving back to UT, Nashville, and Tennessee. She served on CCI’s Board of Visitors (1990–2007) and on the UT Board of Trustees (2007–13). She has led News 2’s partnership with Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee and served on many charitable boards, including Book ’em, Leadership Nashville, Cumberland Valley Girl Scouts, the Middle Tennessee March of Dimes, Inroads/Nashville, and the United Way of Middle Tennessee.
Blackburn and her husband, Kenny, have given generously to CCI by creating the Anne Holt Blackburn Endowed Scholarship.
She has received many awards and honors, including eight Emmys, the George Foster Peabody Award for the investigative documentary Under the Influence, and the 2007 Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement—the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ highest honor. The Nashville Conference on Community and Justice awarded her the Jerry Thompson Communicator’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994, when she was also the first recipient of CCI’s Donald G. Hileman Distinguished Alumni Award. The first woman, the first African American, and the first news anchor to receive the Distinguished Service Award from the Tennessee Association of Broadcasters, Blackburn has also received UT’s Trailblazer Award for advancing diversity in the newsroom. She was inducted into the first class of the Tennessee Journalism Hall of Fame in 2013 and has made numerous appearances as a news anchor on the ABC TV series Nashville.
Blackburn is a community servant, generously giving back to UT, Nashville, and Tennessee. She served on CCI’s Board of Visitors (1990–2007) and on the UT Board of Trustees (2007–13). She has led News 2’s partnership with Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee and served on many charitable boards, including Book ’em, Leadership Nashville, Cumberland Valley Girl Scouts, the Middle Tennessee March of Dimes, Inroads/Nashville, and the United Way of Middle Tennessee.
Blackburn and her husband, Kenny, have given generously to CCI by creating the Anne Holt Blackburn Endowed Scholarship.
Anne Holt Blackburn
2014 Alumni Service Award Winner
2014 Alumni Service Award Winner
