Stone Phillips is one of the most recognizable faces, and voices, in the news industry today. He has made a name for himself on the anchor desk, covering major events all over the world and with special reports on NBC News. The award-winning journalist has been a witness to some of the world’s biggest stories, including drug trafficking in South America and the destruction in war-torn Beirut. He has interview newsmakers like Jeffrey Dahmer, Donald Trump, George Bush, Boris Yeltsin, Michael Jordan, and Jack Kevorkian. This Missourian has truly had a front-row seat to history.
Stone Stockton Phillips was born on December 2, 1954, in Texas City, Texas, but grew up in St. Louis. He graduated from Parkway West High School, where he was a standout athlete and student, which landed him a spot at Yale University.
While at Yale, he continued to star in the classroom and on the field. He was the starting quarterback on the Yale Football team that won the Ivy League Championship in 1976. He brought home the championship trophy for the Bulldogs and won the university’s F. Gordon Brown Award for outstanding academic and athletic leadership. Phillips graduated with honors from the Ivy League school in 1977 with a degree in philosophy.
After graduation, Phillips taught remedial reading and math in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Fulton County Juvenile Detention Center. He was also working as a waiter when he landed a job at the NBC affiliate in Atlanta, WXIA-TV. Over the next year and a half, he worked his way up the ladder as a news producer and reporter. He made the amazing jump two years later to network television when ABC News hired him as an assignment editor in their Washington, D.C., bureau. In 1982, just five years after graduating from college, Phillips was promoted to correspondent for the network.
Phillips entered the national scene in a major way in 1986 when he landed a job with ABC’s 20/20 news magazine. His exposure expanded greatly when he was tabbed to be a substitute host on Good Morning America. In 1992, he made the jump to rival NBC, where he anchored Dateline NBC from its inception until 2007. He has also served as a substitute anchor on Today, NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, and Meet the Press.
Phillips has won a plethora of awards for his outstanding work, including two Emmys for broadcast journalism. He also was honored with the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service from the Society of Professional Journalists, which is one of the highest honors bestowed upon journalists, proving that he is truly one of the best of his generation.
*Phillips was also a member of the Yale senior society Scroll and Key.
Other honors include:
*The Investigative Reporters and Editor’s Gold Medal.
*The Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.
*Three National Headliner Awards.
This website uses cookies.