Steve Inskeep
Steve Inskeep is a host of NPR's Morning Edition, as well as NPR's morning news podcast Up First.
Known for interviews with presidents and Congressional leaders, Inskeep has a passion for stories of the less famous: Pennsylvania truck drivers, Kentucky coal miners, U.S.-Mexico border detainees, Yemeni refugees, California firefighters, American soldiers.
Since joining Morning Edition in 2004, Inskeep has hosted the program from New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, Cairo, and Beijing; investigated Iraqi police in Baghdad; and received a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for "The Price of African Oil," on conflict in Nigeria. He has taken listeners on a 2,428-mile journey along the U.S.-Mexico border, and 2,700 miles across North Africa. He is a repeat visitor to Iran and has covered wars in Syria and Yemen.
Inskeep says Morning Edition works to "slow down the news," making sense of fast-moving events. A prime example came during the 2008 Presidential campaign, when Inskeep and NPR's Michele Norris conducted "The York Project," groundbreaking conversations about race, which received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for excellence.
Inskeep was hired by NPR in 1996. His first full-time assignment was the 1996 presidential primary in New Hampshire. He went on to cover the Pentagon, the Senate, and the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he covered the war in Afghanistan, turmoil in Pakistan, and the war in Iraq. In 2003, he received a National Headliner Award for investigating a military raid gone wrong in Afghanistan. He has twice been part of NPR News teams awarded the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for coverage of Iraq.
On days of bad news, Inskeep is inspired by the Langston Hughes book, Laughing to Keep From Crying. Of hosting Morning Edition during the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession, he told Nuvo magazine when "the whole world seemed to be falling apart, it was especially important for me ... to be amused, even if I had to be cynically amused, about the things that were going wrong. Laughter is a sign that you're not defeated."
Inskeep is the author of Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi, a 2011 book on one of the world's great megacities. He is also author of Jacksonland, a history of President Andrew Jackson's long-running conflict with John Ross, a Cherokee chief who resisted the removal of Indians from the eastern United States in the 1830s.
He has been a guest on numerous TV programs including ABC's This Week, NBC's Meet the Press, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports, CNN's Inside Politics and the PBS Newshour. He has written for publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic.
A native of Carmel, Indiana, Inskeep is a graduate of Morehead State University in Kentucky.
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Latin American cities rank as the most violent in the world. The region suffers from sky-high homicide rates, drug wars and gang violence. NPR is examining the region's turmoil in a series of reports, beginning with a look at the rampant kidnapping problem in Venezuela. -
In Syria, the port city of Tartous is fiercely loyal to President Bashar Assad. It's where many of his supporters, as well as Syrian soldiers, go for vacation. So far about 300,000 Syrians have also fled to the city looking for work and refuge from fighting in cities like Damascus and Qusair. -
Syria's war has polarized the country. But as in many conflicts, a large portion of the population just wants to keep their heads down and stay out of harm's way. A visit to the Sayida Zeinab shrine offers a look into the complicated nature of the war. -
There's fear and frustration in the capital, but even people who acknowledge President Bashar Assad's flaws often grimly hope for the rebels to go away: They believe the government's description of the rebels as terrorists and foreigners out to destroy the country. -
A not-so-funny thing happened earlier this week to Venezuelan humorist Laureano Marquez. He was kidnapped just before a scheduled interview with NPR. After being released unharmed, Marquez talks to Morning Edition about his ordeal and about politics in Caracas ahead of Sunday's presidential election. -
Ahead of this weekend's election to elect a successor to the late President Hugo Chavez, Morning Edition visits a poor neighborhood that was a center of support for Chavez during his 14 years in power. -
New figures out Wednesday morning show the U.S. economy unexpectedly contracted during the last quarter of 2012.
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Connecticut officials and residents and others across the nation on Friday observed a moment of silence and the ringing of bells to remember the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown.
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College football's wild season was not so wild this past weekend. There were no crazy shifts at the top of the BCS rankings as there were the week before. That's because Notre Dame beat the University of Southern California on Saturday and retained its No. 1 ranking.
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After Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi helped broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, he expanded his powers at home by exempting his rulings from judicial review until a new constitution is ratified. Egyptian judges have condemned the move, and some have called for a strike.
