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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After World War II ended, Rosie the Riveter traded in her factory blues for June Cleaver's pink apron. A new exhibit traces pink back to the beginning — when plenty of boys wore it, too.
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On Monday, Deborah Rutter begins her job as president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. She says it never occurred to her that she would be the first woman in the job.
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The comedian was one of early network TV's biggest stars, and he didn't do smut or smarmy remarks. Caesar did skits: grown-up, gentle comedy for the whole family. He died Wednesday morning at his home in Beverly Hills.
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This year, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah fall on the same day. NPR's Susan Stamberg explores how to combine the best dishes for the double holiday, which won't happen again for another 70,000 or so years. And of course, she shares the recipe for her famous Mama Stamberg's Cranberry Relish.
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The 1,400-work exhibition gave many Americans their first look at what avant-garde artists in Europe were up to. It was the biggest art show New York had ever seen and challenged ideas about artistic "progress."
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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.
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As a teenager, Christian Dior helped his mother design the garden at their home in Normandy, France. He carried his love of flowers — also the focus of the French Impressionists who came before him — along with him into his fashion career.
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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.
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Images from conflicts in 28 countries are now on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. "The more you've seen of death and inhumanity, the more it turns you into someone who really can't stand the sight of war," says photojournalist David Burnett.