Jonathan Elias is an Emmy award winning journalist and brings a wealth of experience to his job as anchor and reporter for ABC15 News at 4, 5, 6, and 10pm. Most recently, Jonathan was named 2006 Anchor of the Year by the Arizona Associated Press Broadcasters Association. His other honors include an Emmy award for best Investigative News Writing, and nominations for three awards including two for Best Anchor. He also won top honors for Investigative Reporting from the Associated Press.
Jonathan came to ABC15 from KCBS in Los Angeles in 2002, where he anchored the 6pm news and reported some of the biggest stories in the nation. His team won a prestigious Golden Mike award for coverage of the Jewish Day Care Center shooting.
Jonathan worked in Los Angeles behind the scenes for both CNN and KTLA, but he began his on air career in 1988 in Chico, California, and then moved to general assignment reporter at WBRC-TV in Birmingham, Alabama. Both the Associated Press and United Press International named him "Reporter of the Year" in Alabama and he received an Associated Press award for his coverage of a tornado that struck Huntsville.
KOVR-TV in Sacramento, California, spotted Jonathan and hired him as a reporter, putting him to work covering everything from the devastating Oakland Hills fire to the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King beating. His investigative reporting there helped shut down a national charity that claimed it was collecting millions of dollars to help dying children but was actually funneling most of the money into fundraising and administration. Jonathan was twice honored with a Northern California Emmy for investigative reporting and the Associated Press named him "Best Reporter in Large Market Television" in California.
It was at WCCO-TV in Minneapolis where Jonathan began anchoring, but he was also the station's lead reporter on such national stories as the Oklahoma City bombing, Hurricane Erin, Malibu fires, the Northridge earthquake, the O.J. Simpson trial, Hurricane Emily, the crash of TWA Flight 800, Montana militia, and devastating flooding in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
Jonathan was part of the WCCO team that won one of the highest honors in television, a George Foster Peabody Award. He was nominated for five Emmy awards and won two, including "Best Anchor" for anchoring coverage of Red River flooding. Jonathan also won "Best Writing" and "Best Feature" awards from the Associated Press.
Jonathan has a B.A. in History from California State University at Northridge and lives in Scottsdale with his wife and two children. In his free time, he enjoys golf, martial arts, weightlifting, rock climbing, and target shooting.
