Irish woman Fionnuala Sweeney will be the face of CNN's new international evening news program.

Sweeney will anchor the new show, "World One," which will air every weekday evening at 8:30 p.m.

Sweeney, who is attending the Global Irish Forum in Dublin, says the new-look CNN will reflect the challenges of broadcasting in a wired world.

"Basically the network is changing a lot of its look and its content. There's a challenge out there for broadcasters and newspapers in the age of the internet to try and redefine themselves in terms of news, and with 'citizen journalism.'

"We're still coming to terms with what the internet means to us and in journalism," she told RTE Radio 1 in Ireland.

Sweeney has worked for CNN since the early 1990s and says she landed her job out of pure luck.

"I wanted to go and see a bit of the world ... I was a bit lazy. I didn't want to be waitressing my way [around the world], and I'm a hopeless waitress anyway.

"So, I applied to CNN and it was just at a very lucky time because they had, just after the Gulf War, been put on the map because they were the only people with satellite dishes in Baghdad when all the major networks in America were relying on traditional cable television.

"Of course the cables got cut pretty soon, a few hours after the war began, and they [CNN] were able to keep going. As a result of that, they started another dimension of CNN, which was CNN International. So I was just very fortunate at a time that they were hiring and expanding," she told RTE.

Sweeney's new program launches on Monday.