Linda Wertheimer
As NPR's senior national correspondent, Linda Wertheimer travels the country and the globe for NPR News, bringing her unique insights and wealth of experience to bear on the day's top news stories.
A respected leader in media and a beloved figure to listeners who have followed her three-decade-long NPR career, Wertheimer provides clear-eyed analysis and thoughtful reporting on all NPR News programs.
Before taking the senior national correspondent post in 2002, Wertheimer spent 13 years hosting of NPR's news magazine All Things Considered. During that time, Wertheimer helped build the afternoon news program's audience to record levels. The show grew from six million listeners in 1989 to nearly 10 million listeners by spring of 2001, making it one of the top afternoon drive-time, news radio programs in the country. Wertheimer's influence on All Things Considered — and, by extension, all of public radio — has been profound.
She joined NPR at the network's inception, and served as All Things Considered's first director starting with its debut on May 3, 1971. In the more than 40 years since, she has served NPR in a variety of roles including reporter and host.
From 1974 to 1989, Wertheimer provided highly praised and award-winning coverage of national politics and Congress for NPR, serving as its congressional and then national political correspondent. Wertheimer traveled the country with major presidential candidates, covered state presidential primaries and the general elections, and regularly reported from Congress on the major events of the day — from the Watergate impeachment hearings to the Reagan Revolution to historic tax reform legislation to the Iran-Contra affair. During this period, Wertheimer covered four presidential and eight congressional elections for NPR.
In 1976, Wertheimer became the first woman to anchor network coverage of a presidential nomination convention and of election night. Over her career at NPR, she has anchored ten presidential nomination conventions and 12 election nights.
Wertheimer is the first person to broadcast live from inside the United States Senate chamber. Her 37 days of live coverage of the Senate Panama Canal Treaty debates won her a special Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award.
In 1995, Wertheimer shared in an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton Award given to NPR for its coverage of the first 100 days of the 104th Congress, the period that followed the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress.
Wertheimer has received numerous other journalism awards, including awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for her anchoring of The Iran-Contra Affair: A Special Report, a series of 41 half-hour programs on the Iran-Contra congressional hearings, from American Women in Radio/TV for her story Illegal Abortion, and from the American Legion for NPR's coverage of the Panama Treaty debates.
in 1997, Wertheimer was named one of the top 50 journalists in Washington by Washingtonianmagazine and in 1998 as one of America's 200 most influential women by Vanity Fair.
A graduate of Wellesley College, Wertheimer received its highest alumni honor in 1985, the Distinguished Alumna Achievement Award. Wertheimer holds honorary degrees from Colby College, Wheaton College, and Illinois Wesleyan University.
Prior to joining NPR, Wertheimer worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation in London and for WCBS Radio in New York.
Her 1995 book, Listening to America: Twenty-five Years in the Life of a Nation as Heard on National Public Radio, published by Houghton Mifflin, celebrates NPR's history.
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NPR's Linda Wertheimer walks the halls of power — and the local cafes — with crime novelist Mike Lawson, whose Joe DeMarco books serve up murder and mayhem in the nation's capital. -
Scientists in Switzerland unveiled the results in their search for a subatomic particle that is believed to be key to the formation of stars, planets and eventually life after the Big Bang. Many questions remain about the exact nature of this particle.
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A planned runoff in the 100 meters between Allyson Felix and Jeneba Tarmoh was canceled at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in Eugene, Ore., Monday. Tarmoh decided not to race. The two had tied for third place in the women's 100.
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Members of Congress have left town for their July 4 recess but Washington is still reacting to the Supreme Court decision upholding President Obama's health care law. Each party is looking for ways to use the decision to its advantage in the fall campaign.
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The Supreme Court ruling brought some surprises. Within minutes of the court's decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, health care-related stocks swung up and down. Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said it's his mission to oust Obama and defeat the law.
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In a momentous ruling, the Supreme Court upheld President Obama's health care law. Lawyer Tom Goldstein, who has argued many cases before the Supreme Court and founded SCOTUSblog, says the Obama administration got what it wanted, and got it in an opinion from a renowned conservative — Chief Justice John Roberts. The court's dissenting opinion had a lot of fighting words.
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The entire health care sphere has been bracing for what might happen and all the chaos that might ensue from what the court might do, but the ruling doesn't change much about the Affordable Care Act.
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There was a lot of speculation about how the Supreme Court would decide, but almost every prognostication was wrong: from who the swing vote would be (it was Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the opinion), to what the basis for the opinion would be (it wasn't the Commerce Clause).
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The law was upheld thanks to Chief Justice John Roberts, who sided with the court's more liberal wing, on a very narrow grounds: Instead of saying Congress has the authority to regulate interstate commerce, they said Congress has the authority to levy taxes. And the penalty for people who do not have health care is a tax and therefore constitutional.
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The justices have ruled on the constitutionality of the landmark health care law that has become a signature of Barack Obama's presidency. The law was largely upheld.
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Over the past 24 hours, the Syrian regime has engaged in escalating fighting with rebel fighters, who took on an elite unit of the army and attacked a pro-Assad television station.
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WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange has taken refuge at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. He's seeking asylum in the South American country. Assange is trying to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he's wanted for questioning related to allegations of sexual assault.
