Dan Ronan
Dan Ronan is the Associate News Editor Print and Multimedia for Transport Topics, the leading online and print publication covering the trucking, freight and logistics industry. Ronan's specialty is business and financial reporting. He is the anchor/producer of Transport Topics Radio, a weekly news show on SiriusXM's Road Dog News Channel 146 which covers the trucking industry. Ronan also serves as a part-time news anchor on Sirius XM as the back-up host for Road Dog Trucking News and Road Dog Live.
A native of Chicago, Ronan has been a journalist for five decades, starting professionally while a sophomore in high school at age 14 at WKRS-AM in Waukegan, Illinois. He has covered and broken stories for print and broadcast outlets locally, nationally and overseas, since he first went on the air.
At age 23, directly out of college, Ronan was hired as a producer at the Mutual Broadcasting System in Washington, D.C. Three of his five years at Mutual were spent as the overnight newsroom editor and later as ‘charge editor’ responsible for the hourly and half-hourly newscasts during Larry King's all-night talk show, heard on more than 500 stations coast-to-coast.
In 1988, Ronan joined CNN as a writer and in 1992 was promoted to the position of on-air network correspondent concerning business and economic stories for CNN and its sister network CNN/Financial News. He has also reported for CBS NewsPath (freelance) and leading stations in Dallas (WFAA-News 8), Atlanta (WAGA-Fox 5) and Washington, D.C. (WJLA-Channel 7).
During his career, Ronan has been awarded eight Emmy Awards, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, and two AZBEE Awards for journalism excellence. His national Emmy Award was as part of CNN's coverage of the Oklahoma City Bombing and one of his Murrow Awards was for his reporting on the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. He has traveled to the Iraq/Kuwait border with the U.S. Army, reported from an earthquake zone along the India-Pakistan border, the Oval Office, Camp David, Maryland and twice aboard a NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft as it flew into the eye of two separate category five hurricanes, Ivan and Rita. Ronan served as the network pool producer for several high-profile speeches by Speaker of the House Thomas P. ‘Tip’ O’Neill and President Ronald Reagan.
Ronan also broke the bizarre story of the Tri-State Crematory scandal in Noble, Georgia, when the owner of that facility, for several years, illegally disposed of hundreds of bodies on his property, rather than cremate the bodies and returning the cremains to the families. As a result of his reporting, the State of Georgia enacted much tougher laws and regulations for funeral homes and crematories, and the owner of the crematory spent more than 13 years in prison.
Ronan worked for ten years in public relations, rising to the position of Vice President of Strategic Communications at the Intelligent Transportation Society of American in Washington, D.C. During that time he established himself as one of the transportation industry's experts on crisis communications being interviewed in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News, CBS News, and CNN.
On Dec. 31, 2019, Ronan revealed publicly that as a 10-year-old altar boy, he had been molested by a Jesuit priest at St. Jerome Church in Chicago. Ronan has retained legal counsel to seek justice.
For nine years, Ronan served on the Board of Directors of Snowball Express, a 501©3 that is “Serving the Children of Our Fallen Military Heroes” raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and in-kind donations for the non-profit, which in 2018 became part of the Gary Sinise Foundation.
Ronan's bachelor's degree in Journalism is from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2014, he earned a master's degree in Strategic Communications Management from Kent State University where he serves on the journalism school's Professional Advisory Board. Ronan is a licensed commercial pilot, with instrument and multi-engine ratings. He also earned two certificates in Aviation Accident Investigation Management from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. For 15 years Ronan was an NCAA baseball umpire and small college and high school basketball official.