Jeannie Blaylock is an evening anchor and reporter.
During her tenure at First Coast News, she has earned much recognition for her work, including 26 Emmys, multiple Associated Press awards, several national Edward R. Murrow awards, and a Peabody.
She is the first person in Jacksonville to win the prestigious Peabody, which recognizes her pioneering work in the creation of Buddy Check 12, which has saved the lives of thousands of First Coast women and several men, as well.
Since 2002, Buddy Check 12 has encouraged self-exams and mammograms. A mammogram can pick up a pre-cancer as tiny as a grain of sand, yet almost half of all women don’t get regular mammograms. Jeannie wanted to change that, and so she teamed up with Baptist Health and MD Anderson and has raised more than a million dollars to purchase the “Buddy Bus,” a mobile mammography unit. Jeannie has inspired dozens of cities across the United States to copy Buddy Check 12 and motivate women to catch breast cancer early.
Jeannie believes in working to help the community. In 2014, her “Apple Project” helped to build a free dental clinic on Timuquana Road. She was also the first reporter on the First Coast News team to focus on K9s For Warriors, which trains service dogs to help veterans manage their PTSD. As Jeannie has shown, the group has a 99% success rate at preventing suicides.
Her journalism work has taken her to several other countries. Jeannie’s reports from Haiti inspired donations for earthquake victims, resulting in more than a hundred amputees receiving new prosthetic legs. For the 75th Anniversary of D-Day, she reported live from the Beaches of Normandy. School districts have invited Jeannie to show the First Coast News documentary on D-Day to thousands of students, helping to educate them about the day and its history.
Jeannie graduated summa cum laude with a triple major in English, Communication, and art from William Jewell College in Missouri with overseas study at Oxford University in England. She is married to Jacksonville native, Bill Lyle, and is the proud mom of twins, Katie and Carson.