ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

About the Show

All Things Considered is an essential daily companion to people who want to be in the know. Since 1971, it’s provided an unequaled mix of breaking news, engaging interviews and features, compelling analysis, and insightful commentary. It transforms the way listeners understand current events and view the world. Threaded between reports is the distinctive music that inspired the creation of the online program All Songs Considered. Heard by more than 12 million people on over 600 radio stations each week, All Things Considered is one of the most popular programs in America. By combining headline newscasts with personal reporting, the show sets the benchmark for public radio and has been awarded some of the field’s highest honors, including the Peabody, Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton Award, and Overseas Press Club awards.

About the National Hosts

Before joining NPR, Michelle Norris was a correspondent for ABC News, where she received both an Emmy Award and a Peabody Award for her contribution to the network’s coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As a contributing correspondent for the “Closer Look” segments on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Norris reported extensively on education, inner city issues, the nation’s drug problem, and poverty. She has also reported for The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times. She attended the University of Wisconsin, where she majored in electrical engineering, and graduated from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis where she majored in journalism.

Robert Siegel, senior host of the program, started in radio news as a college freshman in 1964. He began at NPR in 1976 as an associate producer; before joining All Things Considered in 1987, he served for four years as director of NPR’s News and Information Department. Siegel shared in NPR’s 1994/95 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton Award for “The Changing of the Guard: The Republican Revolution,” NPR’s coverage of the first 100 days of the 104th Congress. His coverage of the peace movements in East and West Germany earned him a 1984 duPont Award for excellence in broadcast journalism. And his two-part documentary “Murder, Punishment, and Parole in Alabama” earned the 1997 American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award. He is a graduate of New York’s Stuyvesant High School and Columbia University.

Melissa Block has been with NPR and All Things Considered since 1985, working first as an editorial assistant. then as editor, director, senior producer, and New York-based correspondent. While in New York, she covered many high-profile news events for NPR, from police brutality and terrorism trials to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. Her 9/11 reporting was part of coverage that earned NPR News a Peabody Award. Block also has reported from overseas for NPR News. Her 1999 investigative report on rape as a weapon of war in Kosovo was cited among stories for which NPR News won an Overseas Press Club Award. She graduated from Harvard University in 1983 with a degree in French history and literature and spent the following year as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Geneva.

Visit the All Things Considered and All Songs Considered web sites.

About Our Hosts

Bob Branson

Emily Donahue

Audrey Morton