Chris James is an award-winning reporter for CNN in New York, creating longform feature stories and narrative-driven content for CNN. He also regularly contributes to CNN’s daily streaming show, “Go There.”

James is a longform storyteller passionate about experimenting with different digital platforms. At CNN, his work has tackled a wide range of complex issues nationally and across the globe through a powerful human lens, most recently tracing the history of racial violence in Tulsa, Oklahoma to the city’s present-day simmering tensions. His producing for CNN has notably captured the gripping reality for one migrant child separated from their parent at the U.S.-Mexico border; the dire consequences of climate change on Micronesia’s Marshall Islands; an inspiring solution to combat the opioid crisis in a small Massachusetts town; and the real cost of Trump’s global trade war impacting workers at a manufacturing plant in Missouri. James produced and hosted a compelling 18-minute documentary that revealed deeper generational impacts of the War on Drugs, following one man who got a second chance from the life-saving movement to overturn marijuana convictions. In a 2019 piece that aired on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” James’ profile of a TSA officer on the brink of losing everything provided a snapshot of the grim reality for over 800,000 unpaid federal employees during the government shutdown.

James started at CNN as a producer for Beme, where his work received the 2018 Editor & Publisher’s EPPY Award for a news feature that closely-documented the Kilauea volcano eruption in Hawaii.

Prior to joining CNN in 2017, James spent seven years at ABC News, serving in production roles on “Nightline,” “Good Morning America,” and “The Lookout.” As a producer for “Nightline,” he received three Emmy nominations for the nightly news program’s coverage of Chicago’s gang war and the tragic 2016 mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and the 2015 death of Walter Scott in South Carolina. James also developed and launched “Times x Two,” an experimental digital documentary collaboration between “Nightline” and BBC News geared towards a younger audience. The series received a Webby honoree in 2016.

Originally from New Rochelle, New York, James graduated from New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute as a double major with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Social and Cultural Analysis.