Jane Clayson Johnson
Jane Clayson Johnson
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Jane Clayson Johnson

Jane Clayson Johnson (born April 25, 1967) is an American journalist and author who rose to national prominence as co-host of a network morning news program and covered stories for CBS News, ABC News, and WBUR/NPR.

Clayson was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and lived in Boston, Aberdeen, Scotland; Nashville, and Seattle during her early childhood. She attended Sacramento Country Day School and graduated from Rio Americano High School in Sacramento, California. She is an accomplished violinist and played with the Sacramento Youth Symphony, traveling with them to the International Youth and Music Festival in Vienna, Austria, where they placed 2nd among youth symphonies worldwide.

Clayson is the eldest of three children. In 1985, her brother David died of a brain tumor. Her father was a vascular surgeon in the Sacramento area for over four decades and her mother was a homemaker who also served as president of the Board of the Sacramento Youth Symphony, and as a member of the Sacramento Symphony Board.

Clayson attended Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah on a violin performance scholarship and graduated in 1990 with a degree in journalism. She was given the Earl J. Glade Award as the outstanding student in her program. She placed in the Top 10 in the national William Randolph Hearst Journalism Award for most promising college students in journalism. She is also the recipient of an honorary doctorate degree from Utah State University.

She began her career at KSL-TV in Salt Lake City, Utah (1990–96). While at KSL, she won multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists. She traveled to China to write and produce Faces of Hope, a documentary and series of stories about American doctors providing life-changing care to Chinese children with disabilities. Her work there earned a regional Emmy. She also received the Radio and Television News Directors of America's Edward R. Murrow Award while at KSL.

In 1996, Clayson moved to Los Angeles, California, where she began her network news career at ABC News as a correspondent for Good Morning America, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and other broadcasts, including Nightline with Ted Koppel. Her work included coverage of breaking news, the presidential campaigns of Bob Dole (1996) and George W. Bush (2000), and the O.J. Simpson civil trial. For ABC's affiliate news service, NewsOne, she reported on major events such as the Atlantic Olympic Park bombing and the crash of TWA Flight 800. On overseas assignments, she covered the crash of Korean Air 747 in Guam, NATO's strikes against Kosovo and the resulting refugee crisis in Macedonia and, in Indonesia, the riots that led to the fall from power of the dictator Suharto.

On November 1, 1999, Clayson joined Bryant Gumbel for the debut broadcast of CBS' The Early Show. From 1999 to 2002, she anchored The Early Show through the new millennium, the inauguration of President George W. Bush, and she was on the air for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. During the subsequent days and weeks she co-anchored continuous coverage of the attacks on The Early Show and co-anchored live coverage with Dan Rather at Ground Zero in New York City.

In 2002, Clayson became a correspondent for CBS News. She regularly reported for Eye on America segments and contributed to both 48 Hours and CBS Evening News, substituting as anchor on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, CBS Evening News weekend editions and was a contributor to 48 Hours.

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