During his 25-year career, which includes a lengthy stint as a staff producer for NBC’s DATELINE, Jonathan Dann has received nearly every major broadcast journalism award, including three Peabody Awards and three duPont-Columbia Awards. He won his third duPont-Columbia Award for producing the PBS special “War Stories from Ward #7D,” which followed the struggles of Iraq War veterans suffering from traumatic brain injury. In 2011, he was a finalist for a Gerald Loeb Award for financial reporting.
Dann also produced the highest rated program in CNBC history, “Marijuana Inc: Inside America’s Pot Industry.” The hour-long documentary has aired over 100 times and was nominated for a national Emmy. “Dann’s dedication was enormous, his enthusiasm was contagious,” wrote CNBC Correspondent Trish Regan in her recent book on the underground pot trade.
Dann’s other CNBC productions include the following: “Tom Brokaw Reports: Boomer$!,” a two-hour documentary on the legacy and challenges of the baby boom generation, featuring in-depth interviews with President Bill Clinton and actor Tom Hanks, and reported by NBC Senior Correspondent Tom Brokaw, with whom Dann collaborated closely as the program’s creator and senior producer; “Goldman Sachs: Power and Peril,” which was a finalist for the aforementioned Loeb Award; and “Swoosh! Inside Nike,” which was nominated for a national Emmy.
Before his death in 1998, TV news legend Fred Friendly (George Clooney’s character in the movie feature Good Night and Good Luck) praised Jon Dann in a speech before the Radio and Television News Directors Association. In her recently published memoir, San Francisco television anchor/reporter Belva Davis wrote the following about Dann: “… fearless – a guy who felt endowed to crack open the earth to get the news.”
As a staff producer at DATELINE for three years, Dann’s work included in-depth reports as well as tight deadline “crashes.” He has received 12 regional Emmy’s.