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| A senior host of NPR’s award-winning newsmagazine All Things Considered, Linda Wertheimer has been with NPR since its earliest days. |
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| She joined the organization in 1971 as a tape editor and soon after became ATC’s first director. 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. |
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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.
Wertheimer became a host of All Things Considered in 1989. 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.
Wertheimer was named in 1997 as one of the top 50 journalists in Washington by Washingtonian Magazine and in 1998 as one of America’s 200 most influential women by Vanity Fair.
A 1965 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,” celebrates NPR’s history and is published by Houghton Mifflin. |
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