Susan Stamberg
Nationally renowned broadcast journalist Susan Stamberg is a special correspondent for NPR.
Stamberg is the first woman to anchor a national nightly news program, and has won every major award in broadcasting. She has been inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame and the Radio Hall of Fame. An NPR "founding mother," Stamberg has been on staff since the network began in 1971.
Beginning in 1972, Stamberg served as co-host of NPR's award-winning newsmagazine All Things Considered for 14 years. She then hosted Weekend Edition Sunday, and now reports on cultural issues for Morning Edition and Weekend Edition Saturday.
One of the most popular broadcasters in public radio, Stamberg is well known for her conversational style, intelligence, and knack for finding an interesting story. Her interviewing has been called "fresh," "friendly, down-to-earth," and (by novelist E.L. Doctorow) "the closest thing to an enlightened humanist on the radio." Her thousands of interviews include conversations with Laura Bush, Billy Crystal, Rosa Parks, Dave Brubeck, and Luciano Pavarotti.
Prior to joining NPR, she served as producer, program director, and general manager of NPR Member Station WAMU-FM/Washington, DC. Stamberg is the author of two books, and co-editor of a third. Talk: NPR's Susan Stamberg Considers All Things, chronicles her two decades with NPR. Her first book, Every Night at Five: Susan Stamberg's All Things Considered Book, was published in 1982 by Pantheon. Stamberg also co-edited The Wedding Cake in the Middle of the Road, published in 1992 by W. W. Norton. That collection grew out of a series of stories Stamberg commissioned for Weekend Edition Sunday.
In addition to her Hall of Fame inductions, other recognitions include the Armstrong and duPont Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The Ohio State University's Golden Anniversary Director's Award, and the Distinguished Broadcaster Award from the American Women in Radio and Television.
A native of New York City, Stamberg earned a bachelor's degree from Barnard College, and has been awarded numerous honorary degrees including a Doctor of Humane Letters from Dartmouth College. She is a Fellow of Silliman College, Yale University, and has served on the boards of the PEN/Faulkner Fiction Award Foundation and the National Arts Journalism Program based at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Stamberg has hosted a number of series on PBS, moderated three Fred Rogers television specials for adults, served as commentator, guest or co-host on various commercial TV programs, and appeared as a narrator in performance with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra. Her voice appeared on Broadway in the Wendy Wasserstein play An American Daughter.
Her late husband Louis Stamberg had his career with the State Department's agency for international development. Her son, Josh Stamberg, an actor, appears in various television series, films, and plays.
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From 1941 to 1943, J.D. Salinger exchanged letters with a young, aspiring writer in Toronto named Marjorie Sheard. The letters predate Catcher in the Rye, but Sheard may have been one of the first people to learn about its eventual protagonist, Holden Caulfield. Sheard's letters from Salinger are on display at the Morgan Library in New York. -
The Golden 1920s couple didn't fare as well in the 1930s, and the North Carolina mountain town was host to a particularly sad time. NPR's Susan Stamberg discovered a little-known story of the Jazz Age darlings and their devastating connections to Asheville. -
The Fountain of Youth at Punta Gorda, Fla., was so popular 40 years ago, residents remember waiting in line to get a drink. But in the 1980s, testing found high levels of radium in the well. In other words, the water is radioactive — but it might still prolong your life.
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The nonagenarian artist recently received the National Medal of Arts, and museums around the world are still celebrating his May birthday. The Phillips Collection, in Washington, D.C., is displaying seven "exuberant" pieces: layered or lined-up canvases painted in bold, solid colors. -
The Hays Collection, born of two Tennessee millionaires' love for French art, has come back to its home country: The pieces are currently on display at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. NPR's Susan Stamberg speaks to the American lenders and the French borrowers about why these works inspire such passion. -
In his memoir The Friedkin Connection, the legendary director of films like The Exorcist and The French Connection recounts his journey from a poor Chicago neighborhood to the apex of Hollywood success. -
The biopic Renoir plots the final years of the impressionist master Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and creating the film's sumptuous imagery took a special eye for detail. NPR's Susan Stamberg explores the inspirations behind the film. -
Artist John Baldessari is an iconic figure in some modern art circles. His conceptual pieces — black-and-white photographs covered with colorful dots, a blue sky painted on a museum floor — can provoke smiles. But serious ideas lie beneath the surface. -
A publicist is responsible for making a movie known — in a good way, with any luck. It's a multifaceted job, but what does he or she really do? NPR's Susan Stamberg continues her annual Hollywood Jobs series with a story of one prolific publicist and the director he serves. -
On a movie set, every piece of furniture, wall hanging or bit of desktop clutter that an actor doesn't touch is chosen by the film's set decorator. For her annual Oscar-season series on Hollywood jobs, NPR's Susan Stamberg follows a handful of these decorators from prep through "Action!" -
It's Oscar season, meaning that classic toe-tapper "Hooray for Hollywood" will soon be booming out of TV speakers everywhere. But the cheery cinema hymn has a more complicated compositional past, as NPR's special correspondent Susan Stamberg explains. -
The ongoing violence and tumult in Syria's largest city belie a richer, more prosperous past. One small object — a finely woven hat — offers evidence of life in a thriving cultural hub.
