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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With the presidential campaign season already underway, NPR's Linda Wertheimer has a hot tip for swing state voters feeling besieged: Rent your house to a political operative and take a vacation. -
Homer Laughlin China Co. has been making the brightly colored Fiesta dishes for decades at its factory on the banks of the Ohio River. And it's still going strong. -
Crime fiction writer Peter Temple has created a resourceful Aussie investigator: Jack Irish can fight off bad guys with everything from a child's swing to a tin sheet turned fatal Frisbee. -
Jan. 8 is the 50th anniversary of President Johnson's War on Poverty. NPR's Linda Wertheimer reflects on whether Johnson succeeded in his goal.
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The British Parliament has refused to endorse a military strike against Syria. Prime Minister David Cameron had called the session to argue for military intervention in Syria in response to the apparent chemical strike that killed hundreds there.
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Lawyer turned author Robert Rotenberg takes great pains to re-create the relatively calm atmosphere of Canadian courtrooms in his suspense novels. But not all of his characters play by the rules. "Well, they are murder mysteries," he says. -
The ongoing national debate over surveillance prompts us to take a closer look at the way Americans think about their privacy. Several scientific studies show that what Americans say they want in terms of privacy does not match the way they behave.
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The administration had been trying to appeal a judge's ruling to make the morning-after birth control pill available over the counter with no age restrictions. The Justice Department said it would obey the order — sort of. The FDA may soon approve the over-the-counter sale of Plan B One Step without a prescription.
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The Guardian newspaper says the insider who blew the whistle on the NSA's probing of major U.S. Internet and telecom companies is a 29-year-old analyst who's been working for the agency under a government contract. His name is Edward Snowden.
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President Obama spoke Tuesday about the impacts of deep spending cuts scheduled to take effect March 1. With a group of first responders in uniform standing behind him in the White House, he said if Congress doesn't stop the cuts, responders won't be able to help communities respond to disasters.
