James, Sara

PERSONAL:

Born in Durham, NC; married Andrew Butcher, December 26, 1998; children: two daughters. Education: Graduated from University of Virginia.

ADDRESSES:

Home— New York, NY.

CAREER:

WTVA-TV, Tupelo, MS, news correspondent, 1983-84; WWBT-TV, Richmond, VA, news correspondent, 1984-86; WBTV-TV, Charlotte, NC, weeknight coanchor, 1986-91, first anchor of NBC Nightside,1991-92; NBC News, New York, NY, general correspondent, 1992-94,NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, national correspondent, 1994,Dateline NBC, correspondent, 1994—. Also works as substitute coanchor and substitute newsreader for Today and Weekend Today, both for NBC News, and on MSNBC.

AWARDS, HONORS:

National Press Club Award for international reporting, 1997, for story on Sudanese slavery; Overseas Press Club of America Citation for Excellence, 1998, for report "Stolen Generation"; Emmy Award, 1999, for "Killing at Columbine"; Gracie Award, American Women in Radio and Television, 2001, for "The Long Journey Back," and 2004, for "Life in the Fast Lane"; Headliner Award, 2004, for "Meet Jane Doe"; Woman of Achievement award, Kappa Delta Sorority, 2005. Also received a regional Emmy Award for reporting on the Gulf War for WBTV in Charlotte, NC; received New York Festival Award, and award from American Women in Radio and Television for story on the first American woman to be considered for the space program.

WRITINGS:

(With Ginger Mauney)The Best of Friends: Two Women, Two Continents, and One Enduring Friendship, William Morrow (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

A contributor to the MSNBC Web site wrote, "Sara James is an award-winning correspondent for Dateline NBC, where her work has earned her an Emmy, several Gracies and a Headliner award among others. Since joining the broadcast in December of 1994, she has covered a wide range of stories in the U.S. and overseas." James began her career as a reporter for television stations in Tupelo, Mississippi, Richmond, Virginia, and Charlotte, North Carolina—where she became the first news anchor for NBC Nightside, a news magazine produced by the local NBC affiliate station. It was also while working for WBTV in Charlotte that she earned her first Emmy Award, for her reporting on Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War.

After leaving WBTV, James moved to New York, where she took a position as a correspondent for NBC News with Tom Brokaw. In that role she covered many U.S. foreign news stories, ranging from the ill-fated American relief expedition in Somalia to the last days of Haitian dictator Raoul Cedras. After joining Dateline, she worked on stories ranging from the death of Princess Diana in 1997 to the war crimes trials following the end of the Balkans war in Yugoslavia. She also prepared and presented stories on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the 1999 high school shootings at Columbine in Littleton, Colorado.

In 2007, James, working with her childhood friend Ginger Mauney, composed a memoir of their lives, beginning with the time they spent together as girls and continuing through their parallel (yet quite different) careers. The two grew up in Richmond, Virginia, where they were "friends from the age of twelve, when they first shared secrets at a sleepover party," stated a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Later, the two grew up and went their separate ways, only to reunite after a decade-long absence from one another's lives. While James became an award-winning television journalist, Mauney turned to documentary filmmaking, creating movies that told stories about the animals inhabiting the wild areas of her adopted country, Namibia. In The Best of Friends: Two Women, Two Continents, and One Enduring Friendship, James and Mauney, wrote the Kirkus Reviews contributor, "look back over the years of friendship that sustained them through the ups and downs of their … lives."

The concept for a book on friendship, James revealed in a joint interview with Mauney published on the Web site iVillage, "actually came to me quite suddenly one day when I was on a road trip. It was one of those moments where you mull over life, and think about how you got from where you started to where you are now. In my case," she continued, she was "sitting in a car with a man from 10,000 miles away whom I had just married. And at that moment, it occurred to me that the person who understood that better than anything was my dear friend Ginger, because her life was so similar. Except for the fact that it was absolutely opposite." However, the attraction that drew them back into their friendship, the two authors agree, is based not on the ways in which their lives are now alike, but on their shared past. "They believe that what binds them together," declared Heather Byer in the New York Times Book Review, "is not their great desire to achieve but the durability of a friendship that has lasted decades." "With candor, insight, and wisdom," Carol Haggas wrote in her Booklist review, "James and Mauney joyfully celebrate the inspiring essence of friendship."