Robert Siegel
Prior to his retirement, Robert Siegel was the senior host of NPR's award-winning evening newsmagazine All Things Considered. With 40 years of experience working in radio news, Siegel hosted the country's most-listened-to, afternoon-drive-time news radio program and reported on stories and happenings all over the globe, and reported from a variety of locations across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. He signed off in his final broadcast of All Things Considered on January 5, 2018.
In 2010, Siegel was recognized by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism with the John Chancellor Award. Siegel has been honored with three Silver Batons from Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University, first in 1984 for All Things Considered's coverage of peace movements in East and West Germany. He shared in NPR's 1996 Silver Baton Award for "The Changing of the Guard: The Republican Revolution," for coverage of the first 100 days of the 104th Congress. He was part of the NPR team that won a Silver Baton for the network's coverage of the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province, China.
Other awards Siegel has earned include a 1997 American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award for the two-part documentary, "Murder, Punishment, and Parole in Alabama" and the National Mental Health Association's 1991 Mental Health Award for his interviews conducted on the streets of New York in an All Things Considered story, "The Mentally Ill Homeless."
Siegel joined NPR in December 1976 as a newscaster and became an editor the following year. In 1979, Siegel became NPR's first staffer based overseas when he was chosen to open NPR's London bureau, where he worked as senior editor until 1983. After London, Siegel served for four years as director of the News and Information Department, overseeing production of NPR's newsmagazines All Things Considered and Morning Edition, as well as special events and other news programming. During his tenure, NPR launched its popular Saturday and Sunday newsmagazine Weekend Edition. He became host of All Things Considered in 1987.
Before coming to NPR, Siegel worked for WRVR Radio in New York City as a reporter, host and news director. He was part of the WRVR team honored with an Armstrong Award for the series, "Rockefeller's Drug Law." Prior to WRVR, he was morning news reporter and telephone talk show host for WGLI Radio in Babylon, New York.
A graduate of New York's Stuyvesant High School and Columbia University, Siegel began his career in radio at Columbia's radio station, WKCR-FM. As a student he anchored coverage of the 1968 Columbia demonstrations and contributed to the work that earned the station an award from the Writers Guild of America East.
Siegel was the editor of The NPR Interviews 1994, The NPR Interviews 1995 and The NPR Interviews 1996, compilations of NPR's most popular radio conversations from each year.
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It became dangerous to be German in the U.S. after the country entered World War I. But it was fatal for Robert Prager. The immigrant was lynched in the town of Collinsville, Ill. It's a story people in the St. Louis suburb didn't talk about for years, but today it's on display at a local museum.
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There are tons of quotes from famous people out there — and a lot of them are just plain wrong. Author Garson O'Toole has dedicated himself to setting the record straight. -
The story of how that population grew so large is a long one that's mostly about Mexico, and full of unintended consequences. -
Kansas City Power & Light is building an ambitious, $20 million network of 1,000 charging stations. It's turning its service area into one of the fastest-growing electric vehicle markets in the U.S. -
The Chevy Bolt can go 238 miles on a single charge and costs about $30,000, after a federal tax credit. But the clean-car industry needs government support to thrive, and that's far from certain. -
Donald Trump's manner of speaking has caught the ears of supporters and detractors alike. He sounds different than past presidents, and his authentic rhetoric seems to mimic stand-up comedy. -
2016 was a year of failure for political polling in several Western democracies. France, Britain and the U.S. were all taken by surprise after polls underestimated the support for conservative presidential candidates and Brexit. Now, pollsters in all three countries are reflecting on what went wrong.
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President-elect Donald Trump has been taking credit for good economic news since his election. Robert Siegel talks with NPR's Scott Detrow about the strong economy Trump is inheriting.
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Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe joined President Barack Obama to pay tribute to victims of the attack. Robert Siegel talks with NPR's Elise Hu about Japan-U.S. relations going forward.
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Andy Borowitz's job is satirizing the news, which he does for the New Yorker's Borowitz Report. So what did he think of a year full of fabrications and fake news?
