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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Linda Wertheimer talks about the new movie Crash with film reviewer Joan Kaufman. A large and diverse cast and a script from Million Dollar Baby writer Paul Haggis make for a thoughtful look at a topic that makes so many people uncomfortable.
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At Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, the Army has created a new team to care for wartime amputees with different approaches and new technology.
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In the war in Iraq, no one is truly behind the front lines. A large number of women soldiers are among the wounded, suffering from burns and broken bones, lost limbs and disfiguring scars. We meet three such women at the Brooke Army Medical Center facility in San Antonio, Texas. -
NPR's Linda Wertheimer has been talking to voters around the country throughout this election year. This week, she sat down with women in Green Bay, Wis., one of several states where female voters may decide the outcome in the presidential race.
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Laura Bush is seen as a serene and supportive presence in the White House. On the other hand, she is not given to adoring gazes, as first lady Nancy Reagan was. Within the constraints of her life in the White House, she seems very much her own woman. During this election year, Mrs. Bush campaigns across the country, sometimes making several speeches a day. NPR's Linda Wertheimer has been listening.
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NPR's Linda Wertheimer talks to Lara Weaver in Bloomington, Ind., about the city's new public art project. To encourage people to vote, Weaver enlisted artists to decorate 20 plywood voting booths that will line the streets of downtown Bloomington through Nov. 2.
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Team America: World Police has it all: action, suspense, sex and satire -- all done with puppets. It's the latest film by the creators of the irreverent animated TV show South Park. Hear NPR's Linda Wertheimer and New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell.
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Should Sen. John Kerry be elected president, the new first lady would be Teresa Heinz Kerry, a woman quite different from the traditional cast of White House wives. The widow of a Republican senator who died in a helicopter accident in 1991, she married Kerry in 1996. But through her decades of public life in both parties, she has shown a penchant for independence. Hear NPR's Linda Wertheimer. -
NPR's Linda Wertheimer has been talking to some of the constituent groups that matter most to President Bush's re-election prospects this fall. Republicans are especially proud of their outreach to Hispanic Americans, who are more numerous than ever at this year's Republican gathering.
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Author Jasper Fforde's latest mystery is Something Rotten. It's set in a parallel universe where fictional characters like Hamlet come to life and detective Thursday Next tries to police them. Hear NPR's Linda Wertheimer and Fforde.
