Nationally renowned broadcast journalist Susan Stamberg is Special Correspondent for National Public Radio. Stamberg is the first woman to anchor a national nightly news program, and has won every major award in broadcasting. She has been inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame, and the Radio Hall of Fame.

Beginning in 1972, Stamberg spent 14 years as co-host of NPR's award-winning newsmagazine ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Then, for three years, she hosted WEEKEND EDITION/Sunday. Stamberg now serves as guest host of NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, MORNING EDITION and WEEKEND EDITION/Saturday, and reports on cultural issues for various NPR programs.

One of the most popular broadcasters in public radio, Stamberg is well-known for her conversational style, intelligence, and knack for finding an interesting story. Her interviewing has been called "fresh," "friendly, down-to-earth," and (by novelist E.L. Doctorow) "the closest thing to an enlightened humanist on the radio." Her thousands of interviews include conversations with Laura Bush, Rosa Parks, Luciano Pavarotti, Stephen Sondheim, Billy Joel.

Stamberg is the author of two books, TALK: NPR's Susan Stamberg Considers All Things, published in 1993, and Every Night at Five published in 1982.

In addition to her Hall of Fame inductions, other recognition includes the Armstrong and Dupont Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Distinguished Broadcaster Award from the American Women in Radio and Television.

A New York City native, Stamberg has a B.A. from Barnard College. Her numerous honorary degrees include a Doctor of Humane Letters from Dartmouth College. She is a Fellow of Silliman College, Yale University, and has served on the boards of the PEN/Faulkner Fiction Award Foundation, Columbia University's National Arts Journalism Program, and was a Public Director on the Board of the American Institute of Architecture. Stamberg has hosted several series on PBS, moderated three Fred Rogers TV specials for adults, been commentator, guest or co-host on various commercial TV programs, appeared as a narrator in performance with the St. Louis and National Symphony Orchestras. Her voice appeared on Broadway in Wendy Wasserstein's play "An American Daughter," and in the film "The Siege."

Her late husband Louis C. Stamberg was retired from the Department of State's Agency for International Development. Their son Joshua is an actor.

SURVIVING BREAST CANCER

Personal reflections, 15 years after her own diagnosis. Coping with the worst news you can receive. Notes on support groups, actions that help, thinking that is positive. How to deal with family, friends. How to take charge of your health information and questions. Developing mental attitudes that help get you through this difficult period. It's a high-energy speech. Non-medical. Supportive and uplifting for audiences.

LEADERSHIP TODAY

What key leaders in America have told Susan about what it takes to be a leader today. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com; Sidney Pollock, film director; Carol Bellamy, head of UNICEF; Roy Williams, coach of University of Kansas men's basketball team, and others, share their perspectives on leadership. Bezos says the key is to look your employees in the eye and tell them hard truths. Pollock says in film-making you must have real knowledge of your craft and be able to display it, to gain the confidence of the film crew and cast. Bellamy found different cultural attitudes toward authority made it difficult for her to get proper feedback from her staff. Williams faced a major life decision, and resolved it by leaning on his sense that loyalty is the key to effective leadership.

THE MEDIUM IS INDEED THE MESSAGE.

How we report the news and information depends as much on the medium we use as the content itself. Television, with its quick-changing images, appeals more to our emotions than to our reason. Radio (yes, she's a radio chauvinist), through language and sound, permits listeners to deal with ideas -- the life of the mind. Several concrete examples, from my own reporting, serve to demystify the process of reporting, and reveal various ethical and editorial decisions that crop up along the way, with each story that gets told.

FORGIVE US OUR PRESS PASSES (title borrowed from my beloved NPR colleague Daniel Schorr!)

Ethics and Journalism What's involved in reporting the news. How has it changed because of the new media? Should reporters be pundits on talk shows? What do we need to know, and what is merely extraneous titillation? What's happened to issues of privacy in recent years? How can reporters tell the story without betraying their integrity and the integrity of those they cover? Are hidden microphones ethical? Is it right for a reporter to lie about his/her identity in order to get the story. Will anyone Forgive Us Our Press Passes?

WOMEN IN JOURNALISM

Do women make a difference in the news room? Are the stories we lobby to tell different from those men think are important? Does the fact that we put emphasis on relationships, listening, asking questions, affect the reporting we do, and the answers we get? How candaily newspapers and news broadcasts changed, when women make the editorial decisions?

THE ARTS

Susan's work in recent years, as Special Correspondent at National Public Radio, has focused on various cultural issues. She has done a good deal of reporting on all the arts, with special emphasis on the VISUAL arts -- covering special exhibits of Cezanne, Edward Hopper, Vermeer, varied Impressionists, Picasso, architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, the Bauhaus. Plus plenty of music -- performers, composers, conductors.

FOUR WHO CHANGED THE 20th CENTURY

Four important artists -- Ernest Hemingway, Georgia O'Keeffe, director Elia Kazan, Frank Sinatra -- changed the way we wrote, appreciated painting, films, theatre, and music in the century just past. HOW they did this is the topic of this speech -- with clips of audio tapes, based on my reporting.

INSPIRING WOMEN

portraits of women of our time who have inspired, broken ground, led, had the courage to survive -- all profiled by Stamberg in her reporting career. Georgia O'Keeffe -- the most famous woman artist of the century -- how she changed the way we look at objects, and found the poetry in things. Miep Gies -- who found, then saved the diary of Anne Frank, and helped the Frank family (buying their daily food) throughout World War Two. Betsy Wilson - not famous, but the courageous founder of Let's Face It -- a self-help organization for those with facial disfigurements. Betsy herself had many jaw surgeries for cancer. She is one of the most beautiful people Susan has ever met -- in the most important ways. Nancy Reagan -- how a former First Lady kept Stamberg out in the cold.

JEWS OF SHANGHAI

During World War Two, 23,000 Central European Jews fled Hitler, and got as far as Shanghai China, (1 of the few places that would take them in), only to find themselves trapped there when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. (Shanghai had been under the control of the Japanese for years... but didn't exert their influence until the Pacific War began --
remember Empire of the Sun?). These European Jews lived under terrible conditions, in the slums of Shanghai for nearly 10 years -- and slowly built up a Little Europe there-- with cafes, radio programs, symphony orchestras, newspapers. It's a little-known holocaust story -- of terrible deprivation as well as hope. For NPR Stamberg interviewed dozens of these Shanghai Jews. This speech tells their powerful story.

MIEP GIES AND THE DUTCH RESISTANCE

Mrs. Geis worked for Anne Frank's father Otto. She bought them food during their 25 months of hiding in the secret annex, and is the person who found -- and saved -- Anne's diary after the family was arrested. Miep today is the last survivor of that small circle who helped the Franks. Susan is just back from Amsterdam, where she met with her, and spoke with a variety of people about what it meant to defy the Nazis in those dark days. Miep says she is not a hero. Stamberg examined that statement, and discovered she most decidedly IS. Although the Dutch have a world-wide reputation for resistance during the War (largely because the Frank's story is so well known), Stamberg learned just how complicated any story of resistance is in an occupied nation.