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 Washingtonian magazine 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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I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the most powerful aide to the most powerful vice president in the nation's history, is indicted by a federal grand jury. The news further rocks a White House struggling with a variety of second-term problems.
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Officials in India say several explosions that killed at least 49 people in New Delhi were the work of terrorists. But they aren't saying who was behind them. Neighboring Pakistan has strongly condemned the attacks.
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Blasts on the island of Bali cause deaths and injuries. The island is a popular tourist attraction and victims are of many different nationalities, police say. The same area was targeted by terrorists in 2002, resulting in more than 200 deaths.
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The House majority leader was indicted and forced to step aside. A new chief justice of the United States was confirmed, but a battle looms over a second nominee. It's a dramatic time in American politics.
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Will a gradual, region-by-region withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq begin next summer, as has been suggested? There is a growing sense of urgency to remove American troops, but turning the job over to Iraqi security forces is a complex prospect.
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The day the United States handed over sovereignty to Iraq's interim government, an Oregon National Guardsman witnessed Iraqi soldiers beating Iraqi prisoners. He and other guardsmen intervened, but were later ordered to return the prisoners to their Iraqi captors and walk away. NPR's Linda Wertheimer talks with Mike Francis, who reports on the incident in The Oregonian.
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Illinois state senator Barack Obama will deliver the keynote address at the Democratic convention Monday night. A rising star in the Democratic Party, Obama is heavily favored to win a U.S. Senate seat this fall. At 42, he would become the third black American to serve in the Senate in the last 100 years. Hear NPR's Linda Wertheimer.
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Members of the commission investigating the U.S. government's response to terrorism before and after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, are calling on Vice President Dick Cheney to provide any information the administration may have supporting its continued claim of links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Hear NPR's Andrea Seabrook and NPR's Linda Wertheimer.
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A top official at Iraq's foreign ministry is killed in Baghdad during an ambush by unknown gunmen. Bassam Kubba, who had been a career diplomat, is the first member of Iraq's new interim government to lose his life amid continuing violence and security problems. Hear NPR's Linda Wertheimer and NPR's Emily Harris.
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International tributes pour in honoring President Ronald Reagan, who died Saturday after an extensive battle with Alzheimer's. President Reagan died at his Southern California home; funeral arrangements for include the former president's body lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda before being laid to rest on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Hear NPR's Linda Wertheimer and NPR's Mandalit del Barco.