WEEKEND EDITION

About the Show

Whether revealing events in small-town America or overseas, or profiling notable personalities, Weekend Edition from NPR News recognizes the telling details that make up every story. Covering hard news, a wide variety of newsmakers, and cultural stories with care, accuracy, and a wink of humor, hosts Scott Simon and Liane Hansen entertain as they inform.

On Saturdays, Simon’s award-winning commentaries sum up an idea or event related to the week’s news through intelligent, information-packed exchanges with NPR senior news analyst Daniel Schorr, sports columnist Ron Rapoport, gardening guru Ketzel Levine, entertainment critic Elvis Mitchell, and other commentators.

On Sundays, Weekend Edition combines the hard news with arts and human-interest features, appealing to the curious and eclectic. Hansen engages listeners in her discussions with regular contributors, including Daniel Schorr and special correspondent Juan Williams, who cover a wide range of national and international issues. “Voices in the News” offers a poignant montage of sound bites from the previous week, and Will Shortz, puzzle editor of The New York Times, delivers a fix for diehard crossword puzzle fans.

About the Hosts

Scott Simon brings a well-traveled perspective to his role as host of Weekend Edition Saturday. He joined NPR in 1977 as chief of its Chicago bureau. Since then, he has reported from all 50 states, covered presidential campaigns and eight wars, and reported from Central America, Africa, India, the Middle East, and the Caribbean.

Simon has received numerous honors for his reporting. He was part of the teams that won the prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for coverage of September 11 and its aftermath, as well as the war in Kosovo and the Gulf War. In 1989, his sensitivity in covering the murder of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador and the San Francisco earthquake earned him a Peabody Award. He was the recipient of the Presidential End Hunger Award for his reports on the 1987-1988 Ethiopian civil war and drought, and of the 1986 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for his coverage of racism in a South Philadelphia neighborhood. He also won a 1982 Emmy for the public television documentary The Patterson Project, which examined the effects of President Reagan’s budget cuts on the lives of 12 New Jersey residents.

Simon has written for The New York Times Book Review and Opinion section, the Wall Street Journal opinion page, Los Angeles Times, and Gourmet magazine. He is the author of three acclaimed books: Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan; Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball; and Pretty Birds, his novel about female teenaged snipers in Sarajevo.

The son of comedian Ernie Simon and actress Patricia Lyons, Simon attended the University of Chicago and McGill University.

Liane Hansen has been the host of NPR’s award-winning Weekend Edition Sunday for more than 16 years, covering breaking news, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the capture of Saddam Hussein, the deaths of Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Columbia shuttle tragedy. In 2004, Hansen was granted an exclusive interview with former weapons inspector David Kay prior to his report on the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Before joining Weekend Edition Sunday in November 1989, Hansen hosted Performance Today, NPR’s award-winning daily two-hour classical music and arts information program; and was a regular guest-host for NPR’s newsmagazines as well as Fresh Air with Terry Gross. In 2001, Hansen received the National News and Documentary Emmy Award for “She Says/Women in News” (narrator) directed by Barbara Ricks and her voice can be heard on “In Their Footsteps: Lewis and Clark” and many audio books. She was part of NPR’s coverage of Sept. 11, which received the 2001 Peabody Award.

A native of Worcester, Massachusetts, Hansen received the key to the city in November, 1980. She attended the University of Hartford in Connecticut, and acted with the Worcester Children’s Theater, Entr’Actors Guild, Footlights Theater Company, and the Fenwick Theater Company at Holy Cross College where she was an assistant to the director of the Theater Division.

Visit the Weekend Edition web site.