Susan Stamberg, an original NPR staffer who became the first woman to anchor its flagship show “All Things Considered,” died Thursday. She was 87.
Stamberg’s son Josh confirmed the news to the radio outlet. “A true humanitarian, she believed in the power of great journalism,” he said in a statement to NPR. “Her life’s work was connection, through ideas and culture.”
Stamberg joined NPR shortly after it launched in 1971, becoming the co-host of its flagship program a year later. In doing so, she became the first woman to host a national news program, a significant breakthrough when audiences’ predominant relationships with newscasters were hosts like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.
“There were no role models, there were these men, these deep-voiced announcers, and they were the authoritative ones,” Stamberg recalled years later, according to NPR, before lowering her voice by an apparent two octaves. “So I lowered my voice and I talked like this.”
But while her fellow “founding mothers” of the public radio organization — Linda Wertheimer, Nina Totenberg and Cokie Roberts — made careers out of covering various elements of the federal government, Stamberg made it her mission to build her relationship with an audience through her hosting duties. She spent 14 years leading “All Things Considered” before shifting to “Weekend Edition Sunday,” where she launched the “Sunday puzzle” and created more room for culture coverage in a hard-news environment.
“Susan and I disagreed about politics,” Wertheimer told NPR. “That is to say: I thought it was fantastically interesting. All I wanted to do was cover politics. She thought it was the most boring thing imaginable. She couldn’t think why anyone would want to do that.”
Stamberg interrogated culture, providing a journalistic lens to a facet of the world that shaped how audiences engaged with it. In a 1988 interview with film director Elia Kazan for his memoir, she pressed him on his testimony decades earlier before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which investigated potential Communists in American society. Conducted remotely, the interview was “intense,” Stamberg admitted years later, but she began the conversation with the exchange about his testimony.
“I’ve often asked myself: if it had been a face-to-face interview, would I have been able to be that persistent — and stayed with it?” she said to NPR. “I bet not.”
Stamberg only retired from NPR in September, ending her tenure with a short note to staff: “EASY COME EASY GO. LOVE YOU ALL.”
She later admitted she was the person who came up with the “founding mothers” descriptor.
“I was getting tired of these founding fathers,” she told “All Things Considered.” “You know, equal rights.”
Her prolific career led to honors by the National Radio Hall of Fame and the Hollywood Walk of Fame, among others. She is survived by her son Josh and her granddaughters Vivian and Lena.
