Robert Siegel, 2010 Chancellor Award Winner
About the Winner
Siegel has hosted All Things Considered for 23 years, helping grow the program into a leading primary news source. His work ranges from daily news coverage to foreign reporting to investigative work highlighting the failings of the justice and social welfare systems.
Siegel joined NPR in 1976 as an associate producer, was appointed public affairs editor in 1977 and senior editor in 1978. Siegel was chosen to be NPR’s first foreign correspondent in 1979 and opened its London bureau. Before joining All Things Considered in 1987, Siegel served four years as director of NPR's 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.
Siegel's 1996 two-part documentary "Murder, Punishment, and Parole in Alabama" revealed a criminal justice system beset by the financial difficulties of keeping violent offenders in long-term incarceration. The series earned the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award in 1997. In another remarkable series, over the course of eight years Siegel profiled a 15 year-old named Jeremy Armstrong who was convicted of murdering a drug dealer and sentenced as an adult to serve time in a maximum security prison.
Siegel has been honored with three Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for excellence in broadcast journalism; in 2009 he and All Things Considered co-host Melissa Block were awarded for their coverage of the Chengdu Earthquake in China; in 1996 he was part of the winning team for "The Changing of the Guard: The Republican Revolution," for coverage of the first 100 days of the 104th Congress; and his reporting on the peace movements in East and West Germany earned a 1984 duPont Award. A graduate of New York's Stuyvesant High School, Siegel began his career in radio as an undergraduate at Columbia University, where he worked at the college radio station WKCR-FM, covering the 1968 protests on campus.
"Over the course of his more than 30-year career, Robert Siegel has become almost synonymous with NPR. His style of reporting and interviewing has shaped the very sound of our air," said Vivian Schiller, president and CEO of NPR. "In its depth, breadth and variety, Robert’s work is the essence of quality journalism."
Work by Robert Siegel
Michael Chertoff Defends Rescue Efforts in New Orleans: Robert Siegel interviews Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff as conditions and public order deteriorated in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck. (Sept. 1, 2005)
Troy & Tovan: Revisiting Life After Foster a Decade Later: Here, Siegel returns to a story he reported 12 years earlier. It’s the tale of two 13-year-olds who were roommates in a small group home for foster kids in Washington, D.C. The boys had been plucked from their mothers, both crack cocaine addicts who had failed to provide for their young sons. In 1994, Troy and Tovan had been taken into a model group home. Their future seemed bright. A dozen years later when Robert checks back in with the now young men, that hope had turned to tragedy and despair. (June 6, 2006)
Childhood on Trial: When Siegel first met 15-year-old Jeremy Armstrong, the inner-city Milwaukee teenager was detained awaiting trial for murder. Jeremy’s parents were both drug addicts and his mother was also disabled by mental illness. Jeremy stood at the forefront of a trend in the criminal justice system—juveniles sentenced to adult time in for their crimes. (Dec. 16, 1997)
For many the story ends with the sentencing. For Siegel, this was the beginning of a journey. Over the next eight years in a five-part series, Siegel returned to find out what happened to the young man while he served his time. Robert visits Jeremy after he has been in Green Bay’s maximum security prison for more than two years. Later, he returned to find the 23-year-old in a medium security facility in Oshkosh; he had just been denied parole.
Covering the Chengdu Earthquake: Nearly 9,000 people were feared dead in China after a 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit in mid-afternoon local time in Sichuan province. The earthquake flattened buildings and sent people throughout the region racing into the streets. Siegel and his colleague Melissa Block were in Chengdu at the time preparing stories for a future broadcast. They headed northwest to the site of the heaviest damage. In this story, Siegel reports on a hospital in Dujiangyan that was destroyed. (May 12, 2008)