Shomari Stone

Overview

Shomari Stone is an American broadcast journalist who works as an anchor and reporter for WTTG, the Fox-owned television station in Washington, D.C. known as FOX 5 DC (Adweek). He joined the station in May 2023 after a national stint as a correspondent for CNBC’s The News with Shepard Smith, and before that more than ten years as a general-assignment reporter at WRC, Washington’s NBC-owned station (Adweek). Stone talks unusually openly about his route into the business: as a teenager he washed dishes to pay tuition at a California prep school and later worked as a bellman at a Washington-area hotel while attending high school — jobs he says taught him to connect with people who feel overlooked (City Lifestyle).

Early life and entry into journalism

Stone was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan (City Lifestyle). He says he decided at the age of seven, watching 60 Minutes with his family, that he wanted to grow up to be a journalist like Ed Bradley (City Lifestyle). He attended Woodside Priory, a prep school in California, where he washed dishes to help pay his tuition; after his family moved to the Washington area, he attended St. John’s College High School while working as a bellman at the Embassy Suites in Friendship Heights (City Lifestyle). He went on to earn a degree from the University of Michigan, where the announcement of his CNBC hiring says he received six journalism awards (Talking Biz News).

Stone’s first on-air job was in Fort Myers, Florida, where by his own account he sometimes stumbled through live shots and was mocked by colleagues — but encouragement from his parents and from the station’s main anchor, Jim McLaughlin, kept him in the business (City Lifestyle). Within about a year he moved up to CBS Miami (WFOR), where he stayed for eight years (City Lifestyle). He later reported for KOMO in Seattle before landing in Washington (Talking Biz News).

Breaking-news career in Washington and nationally

Stone joined WRC-TV, known on air as NBC4 Washington, as a general-assignment reporter on August 22, 2011, specializing in breaking news (Ragan). In his first week he covered a 5.8-magnitude earthquake and Hurricane Irene (Ragan). His Washington portfolio grew to include reporting from Boston after the bombing at the Boston Marathon, the 2013 shooting at the U.S. Capitol, the Baltimore protests, and an exclusive interview with Trayvon Martin’s parents while they were in Washington (Ragan). He was also part of the News4 team that earned an Emmy Award for coverage of the Washington Capitals’ championship (Ragan).

His Miami years had already put him on major national stories. Stone was part of the CBS4 team recognized with an Edward R. Murrow Award for live coverage of the federal air-marshals shooting at Miami International Airport (Ragan). His reporting there and since has taken in the inauguration of Barack Obama, immigration reform, the passage of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma through Florida, a John McCain campaign appearance in Miami, the local impact of Fidel Castro relinquishing power in Cuba, and the fall of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (Ragan). CNBC’s hiring announcement added the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol to that list (Talking Biz News).

On April 4, 2022, Stone moved to the national level, joining CNBC as a general-assignment reporter for The News with Shepard Smith, based at the network’s Washington bureau while traveling nationally and internationally (Adweek). CNBC’s senior vice president for business news, Dan Colarusso, told staff that Stone was known for “getting to the heart of the stories he covers” (Adweek). When that newscast was canceled, his future FOX 5 co-anchor Angie Goff encouraged him to make the move to WTTG; he started there on May 1, 2023, reporting and anchoring evening newscasts (City Lifestyle) (Adweek). WTTG vice president and news director Paul McGonagle said Stone had “already earned the viewers’ trust through his years dedicated to helping the DMV community, holding local leaders accountable, and breaking impactful stories” (Adweek).

Recognition and public record

Profile coverage describes Stone as a seven-time Emmy and two-time Edward R. Murrow award winner (City Lifestyle). The National Capital Chesapeake Bay chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences included him in its published 2022 Capital Emmy nomination coverage (Capital Emmy Awards). His professional identity is also recorded in the U.S. Congressional Directory’s press-galleries listing for the 117th Congress (U.S. Government Publishing Office).

In interviews Stone has also spoken about his life off camera. He has described reaching 299 pounds and being warned by doctors about potential health problems, then working with a nutritionist in Rockville, cutting out sugar, carbohydrates and alcohol, and losing 38 pounds in 43 days — an effort he discussed publicly to encourage others (City Lifestyle). He notes that when he is not working, he is usually in a University of Michigan sweatshirt — the school where his son, Shomari Stone II, plays football (City Lifestyle).

What this profile does not claim

This profile states award totals as they appear in Stone’s public biography and profile coverage; it does not present independent awarding-body records confirming exact lifetime totals, which were not reviewed in this pass. It follows the majority of sources on his education — the University of Michigan, where CNBC’s hiring announcement says he earned six journalism awards — while noting that one trade-press item instead says he graduated from the University of Miami and wrote for The Miami Hurricane (Talking Biz News). No birthdate was found in the sources read for this rewrite, and net-worth or salary figures published by aggregator sites were not used because none could be verified.