Chris Connelly
Since 2001, Chris Connelly has been a contributor to ABC News. Connelly has interviewed actors, filmmakers, musicians and high-profile personalities for stories on “Good Morning America” and “Nightline”; reported on celebrity and pop culture; chronicled true crime for “20/20,” where murder cases have taken him from Las Vegas and Alaska to small-town Texas; added context and narrative elements to ABC News Studios’ long-form projects; and covered the Academy Awards® on the red carpet.
Connelly is also a reporter for ESPN, where his stories appear as part of “SC Featured,” “NFL Sunday Countdown,” the sports newsmagazine “E60,” and ESPN’s flagship show “SportsCenter.” He is perhaps best known for ESPN’s award-winning series “My Wish,” which has run yearly on “SportsCenter” since 2006 in cooperation with Make-A-Wish.
Connelly began his career in journalism at Rolling Stone in 1981, where he wrote the first national magazine cover stories on Tom Cruise, U2 and Madonna. Later, he served as an editor and writer at the film magazine Premiere. During his 13 years at MTV, he was a host and interviewer for the weekly movie series “The Big Picture” before joining MTV News as a correspondent, where he covered the murder of Tupac Shakur, Woodstock 94 and Woodstock 99, and the 1996 Republican and Democratic conventions, while also interviewing dozens of bands and pop performers.
He is a seven-time winner of the Edward R. Murrow Award for Feature Reporting. He contributed to ABC News’ “The Power of Water,” which won a 2024 duPont-Columbia Award, and to the network’s Emmy®-winning coverage of the California fires in 2007. He has a Peabody Award for his work on ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” series and three Sports Emmys for ESPN feature stories. In 2000, he received a News Emmy nomination for writing the MTV News special “Where Were You at 22?” about the young lives of presidential candidates. He was nominated for a Primetime Emmy as a writer for the Peabody Award-winning 9/11 benefit “America: A Tribute to Heroes” and contributed to network-wide benefits for victims of Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
