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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One of de Kooning's friends once asked her what it was like to work in the shadow of her husband, Willem de Kooning. She replied: "I don't paint in his shadow, I paint in his light.'" -
The dramatic images at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art linger in the mind. Curator Linda Komaroff says she hopes the collection challenges an American audience to rethink preconceptions. -
The first president of NPR has died at the age of 84. Don Quayle had a long career in public broadcasting, both in television and radio. Susan Stamberg reflects on his impact on NPR and her career. -
An exhibit at the Library of Congress is devoted to the art of theatrical design. Drawings, sketches, watercolors, posters and scale models reveal how magic and spectacle are achieved before our eyes. -
The developer was known for well-crafted tract homes that dotted California suburbs after World War II. "The architecture really does inform the way you live," says Eichler homeowner Adriene Biondo. -
Duveen once observed: "Europe has a great deal of art, and America has a great deal of money." A new exhibit explores the relationship between Duveen and American mega-millionaire Norton Simon. -
Manet was not himself an impressionist, but he mightily influenced the movement. Two of his paintings are now in LA. The Railway is making its West Coast debut, and Spring just sold for $65 million. -
NPR's Susan Stamberg has talked to everyone from focus pullers to foley artists. She finds that in the last 10 years, technology and out-of-state tax incentives have been Hollywood game-changers. -
In movies, crowd noise, hospital waiting room chatter and barroom brawl sounds are created by voice actors called loopers. "If it's done right, you shouldn't even notice it," one sound mixer says. -
Melissa McSorley's job is to make food look good — and last — on camera. Sometimes that means cooking 800 Cubano sandwiches, other times it means scooping butter instead of ice cream.
