Lauren Stephenson

About

Lauren Stephenson is a reliable, knowledgeable and detail-oriented television producer, anchor and reporter driven to provide viewers with context and substance in reporting the stories that matter to them. She’s always prepared to conduct well-researched interviews and possesses a wide-ranging knowledge of current events as demonstrated in breaking coverage. Stephenson is a self-starter with a record of producing high-quality content. You can count on her to be a team player who is able to work under intense deadlines and across platforms.

Lauren is passionate about bringing viewers the latest news beyond the headlines by providing context and distilling complex information into easy-to-understand, digestible segments. 

She has a demonstrated hunger to provide viewers with the most updated information in an accurate and thoughtful manner.

Her curiosity and dedication to research and preparation is evident in the interviews she’s conducted with lawmakers, medical and legal experts, and former presidential administration officials.

As an avid consumer of all forms of news, Lauren’s wide-ranging knowledge of current events enables her to provide context and ask thoughtful questions during breaking news coverage. Her breaking news anchoring experiences include covering U.S. airstrikes in Iran, wrapping and filling time during breaks in confirmation hearings and fact-checking presidential news conferences.

A former multimedia journalist, Lauren is scrappy. Having built a national newscast with an incredibly small team, she is well-versed in a variety of roles and responsibilities including but not limited to anchoring, segment producing, line producing and reporting.

Journalists play a vital role in informing the public and bear a great responsibility to ensure the information they provide is accurate and free of bias and spin. Those values are at the core of everything Lauren does.

Over the course of her career, Lauren has

• helped create and plan a show from its inception and built it into one of the network’s most-watched newscasts.

• distilled entire days of President Trump’s first impeachment trial into detailed but digestible nightly A-block segments.

• reported from Paris in the hours after the destructive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral. She was able to share the stories of communities forgotten in the fire’s aftermath including the country’s sizable homeless population and the city’s second-largest parish which had recently experienced a fire as well. Lauren took viewers up close: to the boat anchored below the Rose Window. She spoke with the man who lives on the boat and was one of the first witnesses to the fire.

• distilled exit polling data and election results for viewers on election night.

• trudged through a swamp to bring viewers to the scene of a decades-old cold case murder. This was the first time any outlet was granted access to the site. She also brought viewers inside the state’s crime lab to see how DNA technology was providing investigators another opportunity to solve the case.

• completed live shots from her phone at a Biden-Harris 2020 presidential election victory celebration.

• traveled to Washington, D.C. with our nation’s veterans to document their journeys on the Never Forgotten Honor Flight. Lauren reported, filmed and edited all the pieces.

• participated in the ballet line with a state champion water ski team while profiling the team’s unique history.

Journalism is a key part of Lauren’s identity. When she’s not working, you may find Lauren along Chicago’s lakefront trail during the (few) warmer months, practicing yoga, watching home design shows and reading interior design blogs, dabbling in photography, baking and trying new restaurants with friends and family.