‘CNN Newsroom’ host Brooke Baldwin says she’s leaving the network in April

CNN host Brooke Baldwin is leaving the cable news network this spring, she announced Tuesday on her show, “CNN Newsroom.”

The 41-year-old journalist is timing her departure to the April publication of her book “Huddle” and said she will focus in the future on what she loves most about her work: “amplifying the lives of extraordinary Americans and putting my passion for storytelling to good use.”

Baldwin doesn’t have a job lined up after 13 years at CNN and said that she is feeling “very vulnerable” but that she’s excited about what’s to come.

“After most of my 20s working my way up in local news, I came to this network in 2008 — in the midst of the Great Recession — as a freelancer,” she said. “I scribbled my name on a Post-It note and stuck it outside of this temporary office, determined to fulfill my dream of becoming a full-time CNN correspondent. I wanted to be part of the best of the best in cable news and journalism. And as a native Atlantan, this would be my hometown team.

“Little did I know, I would not only go on to fulfill that dream, I would flourish in this environment and land my own two-hour show in the afternoon at the age of 31.”

The newscaster, a Peabody Award finalist and News Emmy nominee, said she had never taken for granted “the enormous responsibility and privilege” she’s had working at the network while covering the era’s “most urgent and important stories.” Among them: conflicts, terrorism, environmental and natural disasters, gun violence, human interest stories, royal weddings, her “American Woman” digital series, the social justice movements that she said define our culture, and a pandemic that has changed the world.

“And politics. Lots of politics,” she added.

She felt deeply supported by viewers in April when her bout with COVID-19 took her off the air for weeks, during which she chronicled her day-to-day battle in a “coronavirus diary” for the network and social media.

Baldwin also blew a kiss to her show team, thanked CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker and her CNN family and plugged her first book, the upcoming “Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power.” The HarperCollins release is due April 6.

“You know, there is just more I need to do. More I need to do outside of this place. Outside of the walls of this place. A place I have been privileged to call home now for 13 years,” she said.

A rep for CNN did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.