A former TV news anchor, Ellerbee is the creator of Nickelodeon's Nick News series, a longtime producer of issue-driven TV documentaries, and the presumed inspiration for Candice Bergen's titular character on Murphy Brown.

Born in Texas and a Vanderbilt dropout, she started her career with gigs at radio stations and as a copywriter for the Associated Press. She was eventually picked up by a CBS affiliate in Houston and within months she moved up to WCBS in New York, but she got her real big break a few years later with NBC. A reporter for the Today Show, she landed her first anchoring gig with Lloyd Dobyns on Weekend and subsequently on NBC News Overnight. With the show's wry writing style and signature send-off, "And so it goes.." Ellerbee made her mark on the television landscape, especially as the rumored inspiration for Murphy Brown (which she guest-starred on as herself in 1989). But after Overnight was cancelled, she moved to rival network ABC for a few years before landing at, of all places, Nickelodeon. As the creator of Nick News, she's shown her continuously high standard for her journalism. In fact, the duPont Columbia Awards called Nick News "possibly the best written and most intelligent news program ever." In addition to television career, she has written a couple of memoirs and an eight-part series of YA books called Girl Reporter. [Image via Getty]