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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Steve Coll wins the Pulitzer Prize in general non-fiction for his book Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden. Robert Siegel talks with Coll, former managing editor of The Washington Post.
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A downturn in the maple syrup market is having harmful side effects for trees in northern New England. For the first time in decades, the maples remain untapped, with sometimes-dangerous results. -
A new exhibit in the National Gallery of Art explores painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's relationship to Montmartre, the Paris district that drew artists and bohemians in the late 19th century.
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Robert Siegel talks sports columnist and author Ron Rapoport about his new book, The Immortal Bobby: Bobby Jones and the Golden Age of Golf. In 1930, golf extraordinaire Jones achieved a string of victories that became known as the Grand Slam.
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A Basra University School of Engineering picnic was violently disrupted two weeks ago by religious militiamen who beat students they considered to be immodest. Robert Siegel talks with Anthony Shadid, who wrote about the incident in Tuesday's Washington Post.
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Robert Siegel sits down with violinist Chien Tan for a performance and chat. Tan plays the violin with the Oregon Symphony; she is also one of just a handful of people playing the treble violin, an instrument about the size of a "quarter-size" standard violin and plays an octave higher.
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Kyrgyzstan is a mountainous country in central Asia that has one particular resource of value: gold. It has also been seen as an island of democracy. China is particularly interested in events there. Robert Siegel talks with Martha Brill Olcott, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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The oposition seizes control of the government of Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia. President Askar Akayev has not been seen in public and is believed to be outside the country. Robert Siegel talks with Moscow Times correspondent Greg Walters.
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Blake Hoffarber launched an amazing shot from the floor during the Minnesota High School Basketball Championship game that tied the score. His team went on to win. Hoffarber sent the ball into the net from his back -- lying on the floor with half his body outside the court. NPR's Robert Siegel talks with Hoffarber.
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NPR's Robert Siegel talks with Dr. Jay Wolfson about the Terri Schiavo case. Wolfson is a professor of public health and law at the University of South Florida; in 2003, a Florida court appointed him to be Schiavo's guardian ad litem for a month.
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Robert Siegel talks to Howard Wexler about his late father, Sy, who made educational films from Squeak the Squirrel to Teeth Are for Life. He died Thursday in Los Angeles at age 88.
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Chinese craftsmen used diamonds and sapphire to polish tools thousands of years earlier than previously believed, according to new research findings. Robert Siegel talks with Peter Lu, a physics graduate student at Harvard, who applied advanced material science microscopes and tools to ancient Chinese artifacts.
