When I took a couple of years to do the documentaries after I left 'American Morning' - what was I gone for, five years? - I didn't feel that I was floating under the radar.
Morning TV is about habits. What you really need is for viewers to find you, get comfortable with you, make you part of their mornings. If you can make news, deliver things they value, you can be successful.
We have a foundation, the Soledad O'Brien Starfish Foundation. We send girls to and through college. We started-off saying we send girls to college, but to do so is not enough. Seeing them through college is the key.
People are interested in things not necessarily covered by the mainstream media, so they download things online. The categories are growing because people find out that they're not able to get information about stories that are of interest to them on the evening news.
My trademark at CNN was really asking insightful questions and making sure people are understanding the connections in humanity, and I think that is the core of education.
We struck an unusual deal. I'll get to leave CNN with my catalog and documentaries. We were able to create a brand at CNN - 'Black in America' - that I now own. I can take that brand and extend it in any way I want.
HBO is undeniably a leader in meaningful storytelling in a wide array of formats. I'm honored to join the REAL SPORTS team and look forward to continuing my fervor for uncovering unique and impactful stories.
Am I a liberal or conservative? I'm neither. Like most Americans, I find politics very frustrating. Like most Americans, I'd like to hear from politicians the facts. That is what drives me.
I have four relatively small children, and around fourth grade, they start doing big projects on Native Americas: everything is Native Americans in elementary school. Do you know how many Native American dresses I've sewn, on and on; it's a full yearlong study. And then never again. As journalists, we never even cover Native Americans.
When I left 'American Morning' in 2007, I'd focused on doing documentaries. But I thought 'Starting Point' was a great opportunity to be involved in the zeitgeist.
What I think is great style advice that people have told me is that people who are confident look beautiful. No matter what they're wearing, no matter if they're inappropriately dressed, no matter if their hair's not really done right, eyebrows haven't been tweezed.
The thing I love about political interviews is, if you're really prepared, you can make great headway because these are the people for whom, theoretically at least, the buck stops.
Stories, as we're taught in journalism school early on, are told through people. Those stories make our documentaries powerful. You can explore someone's culture, you can explore their experience, you can explore an issue through human beings who are going through it.
I would say I'm black because my parents said I'm black. I'm black because my mother's black. I'm black because I grew up in a family of all black people. I knew I was black because I grew up in an all-white neighborhood. And my parents, as part of their protective mechanisms that they were going to give to us, made it very clear what we were.
