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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The Bush administration is considering seeking a new U.N. resolution that would endorse a broader multi-national force to restore order in Iraq. Hear NPR's Linda Wertheimer and Eric Rouleau, a journalist who is the former French ambassador to Turkey and Tunisia.
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Few basic services have been restored to Iraq despite vigorous U.S. efforts to repair damage from the war and the years of economic sanctions that preceded the conflict. Normal life may be a year or more away. Hear NPR's Linda Wertheimer and Lt. Col. Sam Gardiner, retired.
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Chinese health officials report seven more deaths from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, raising China's SARS-related deaths to 122. In Beijing, a second hospital is sealed off and 4,000 residents are under quarantine. Disease experts urge people to heed travel advisories. Hear NPR's Rob Gifford and NPR's Linda Wertheimer.
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Efforts to gather a new goverment are under way in Iraq, but the process is slowed by the diversity of competing interests. Shia leaders were absent from a meeting in Nasiriyah this week, saying they wouldn't take part in talks led by the U.S. military. Hear NPR's Linda Wertheimer and NPR's Mike Shuster.
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Postwar Baghdad grinds along without water and electricity, and without work. Restoring power remains a baffling challenge. The conditions make it possible for looting to persist. Yet protesters call for Americans to go home. Hear NPR's Scott Simon and NPR's Linda Wertheimer.
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The Pentagon's practice of embedding reporters with U.S.-led troops in Iraq has an unexpected consequence. Many military families can keep better track of their loved ones through the news media than through infrequent e-mails and phone calls. NPR's Linda Wertheimer reports.
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The Chinese New Year, a celebration that starts with the new moon and lasts for 15 days, begins this year on Feb. 1. NPR's Linda Wertheimer looks at a new children's book — Moonbeams, Dumplings & Dragon Boats — that tells the stories behind this and three other major Chinese holidays. See illustrations from the book and try some recipes. -
A native of Indiana, John Poindexter went to the Naval Academy, became an admiral and went to work in the White House with the National Security Agency. He then became a central figure in the mid-1980s affair called Iran-Contra. That got him indicted and convicted of misleading Congress, but it did not end his government career. Today, John Poindexter is back, and NPR's Linda Wertheimer has this profile.
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In a holiday hurry? Get ready to cook up a Christmas meal in no time at all, with some unlikely -- but speedy -- ingredients from baby food jars and soup cans. NPR's Linda Wertheimer reports takes on some time-saving recipes and NPR Online has them.
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NPR's Linda Wertheimer consults with some cooking pros and gets recipe ideas for all those Thanksgiving leftovers.
