NPR ‘founding mother’ Susan Stamberg dies at 87

Susan Stamberg, one of the first and most recognizable hosts on NPR, died Thursday at 87, the network announced. 

Stamberg started at NPR in 1971 and began co-hosting All Things Considered the next year. She retired from NPR in September. 

“Susan’s voice was not only a cornerstone of NPR — it was a cornerstone of American life,” said NPR CEO Katherine Maher in a press release. “She showed that journalism could be both rigorous and deeply personal. She inspired countless journalists to believe they could explore life and truth, and lead with both authority and warmth.”

As host of ATC, Stamberg was the first woman to anchor a national nightly news broadcast. 

In her retirement announcement, Scott Simon, host of Weekend Edition Saturday and Up First, called Stamberg “the voice of NPR: quizzical, curious, respectful, and engaging, as she goes from sober assessments of important events into a full-out, ear-ringing belly-laugh, while taking listeners along, like friends on a journey.”

Stamberg is considered one of NPR’s “founding mothers”, along with Nina Totenberg, Linda Wertheimer and Cokie Roberts. She is in the Broadcast Hall of Fame and the Radio Hall of Fame, and she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Before joining NPR, Stamberg was a PD and GM at WAMU in Washington, D.C.

She started in public radio after moving to Washington, D.C., where she first worked as a typist at The New Republic. “That’s what women could do in those days … but I got very bored after a while,” she told Current in a 2017 interview.

She began asking around, and a friend told her about a producer job at WAMU. When she asked what a producer does, her friend said, “A producer is someone who doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” Stamberg recalled. 

“I said, ‘I can do that.’ … That’s how I came to it, through sheer boredom,” she said.