60 MINUTES executive producer Tanya Simon today announced Draggan Mihailovich as the next executive editor of the venerable CBS newsmagazine. 60 MINUTES has been America’s #1 news program for more than five decades.

“Draggan is a first-rate journalist and storyteller whose pieces have been among the most memorable to air on 60 MINUTES since he joined the broadcast nearly three decades ago. Whether he’s producing investigations, features or profiles of legendary athletes, he thinks big and has the highest standards. I can’t think of a better partner,” said Simon.

“This is the honor of my career. I’ve had the privilege to work with many legends inside 60 MINUTES and it means a great deal to me to help usher in a new era of the broadcast under Tanya,” Mihailovich added.

Mihailovich joins the senior ranks of the CBS newsmagazine after spending 27 years as a producer for 60 MINUTES and 60 MINUTES II where his standout reporting, profiles and investigations earned him seven Emmys and three Edward R. Murrow Awards. Mihailovich joined the broadcast in 1998.

Mihailovich has produced epic stories of adventure, profiles of courage, led high-stakes investigations and reported from the frontlines of war zones. His franchise reporting on the Sudanese lost boys, 3,000 young men who were orphaned during Sudan’s civil war and resettled in the U.S., was recognized with an Emmy Award. Mihailovich’s unmasking of Rafid Ahmed Alwan, the Iraqi defector code named “Curve Ball” whose fabricated story of mobile biological weapons was key to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, was honored with an Emmy, as was a report on the battle against Islamic extremists inside Pakistan that featured an interview of President Asif Ali Zardari. Mihailovich has dispatched to the rain forests of the Foja Mountains in New Guinea for a story on rare species found nowhere else in the world, flown to the far-flung and uninhabited Aleutian island of Attu for a feature on the only land battle on North American soil during World War II, interviewed 11-year-old Elian Gonzalez about becoming the center of a custody battle between the U.S. and Cuba and traveled to Yemen to interview Osama bin Laden’s former personal bodyguard. During his more than two-decade career, he’s profiled international tennis star Novak Djokovic, University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, St. Louis Cardinals’ baseball great Albert Pujols, NBA superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo and Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps.

He began his career at 60 MINUTES working with correspondents Steve Kroft and Bob Simon. Over the last decade, Mihailovich has produced for Jon Wertheim and Sharyn Alfonsi.

Before joining the CBS newsmagazine, Mihailovich led the Olympic research departments for CBS Sports and ABC Sports for six years. During his tenure at CBS Sports, he served as an Olympic feature producer where his reporting was honored with four Emmy Awards, including a 35-minute profile of Olympian and WWII bombardier Louis Zamperini, whose plane crashed into the Pacific and was the inspiration for the bestselling book and film “Unbroken.”

Mihailovich began his journalism career in college at The University of North Carolina where he served as Woody Durham’s radio color commentator during Carolina football games for the Tar Heel Sports Network. While in school, he also contributed articles to The Daily Tar Heel as a reporter. After graduating from UNC in 1983, he was hired to serve as associate sports editor for The Chapel Hill Newspaper.

Mihailovich was inducted into the North Carolina Media and Journalism Hall of Fame in 2022 and was presented with UNC’s Distinguished Young Alumni Award in 2001.

Mihailovich graduated from UNC with a degree in journalism. He lives in Stamford, Conn., with his wife. They have three children.