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JIM AVILA
ABC News correspondent, "20/20"
Award-winning journalist Jim Avila joined ABC News' "20/20" as a correspondent for the Fall 2004 Season. He reports on a wide range of stories, including his unique brand of investigations.
Mr. Avila joined ABC from NBC News, where he had served as National Correspondent for "Nightly News" since January 2000, covering a range of domestic issues that included the September 11 attacks and their aftermath and the DC sniper shootings. He also reported from Afghanistan and Iraq, during which time he filed from inside NBC's Baghdad hotel compound during and after its bombing by terrorists.
Since 1997 Mr. Avila averaged 130 reports a year on "Nightly News," which was the highest number for any minority in broadcast history, according to Joe Foote at Arizona State's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. Before being named National Correspondent at NBC,
Mr. Avila was a Chicago bureau correspondent, where he covered high-profile events including the shooting tragedies in Littleton, Colorado, Jonesboro, Arkansas and Paducah, Kentucky.
Prior to NBC, Mr. Avila was the investigative reporter for KNBC in Los Angeles, from 1994 to 1996. There he was the principal reporter on the O.J. Simpson criminal trial, helping the station earn the 1995 Golden Mike Award and a 1996 Emmy Award.
Before joining at KNBC, he was a general assignment reporter at WBBM-TV, the CBS affiliate in Chicago, covering a variety of news stories of local, national and international importance, including the Persian Gulf War from both Saudi Arabia and Tel Aviv. Among his notable stories for WBBM-TV were the Beirut War, the TWA hijacking, the Nicaraguan civil war and the Mexican earthquake.
From 1980 to 1984 Mr. Avila was a general assignment reporter for WLS, the ABC owned station in Chicago. Prior to that, he was a weekend anchor and the San Jose bureau chief for KPIX in San Francisco from 1976 to 1980. He began his broadcast career at KCBS Radio in San Francisco in 1973 as managing editor, and was later promoted to bureau chief.
The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Mr. Avila has received four Edward R. Murrow Awards for his coverage of September 11, the DC Sniper attacks and the War in Iraq. This year he was awarded the prestigious Mongerson Prize for Investigative Reporting on the News by Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He has also received a national Emmy Award for his coverage of the Grand Forks floods, five Chicago-area Emmy Awards in the category of Spot News, and in 1999 the National Association of Hispanic Journalists honored him with the TV News Feature Award. In addition he garnered three Peter Lisagor Awards from the Headline Club of Chicago, winning for his coverage of the Peru drug wars and the death of Mayor Harold Washington, and was named Best Reporter of 1989.
Mr. Avila lives in Chicago and Miami. He has three children.