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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Stanley Martin wants to rethink Rochester police — a radical new plan to abolish the police gradually. Others also talk about "reimagining" police, though they mean the same word very differently. -
Howard is the nation's only historically Black university with a classics department, but it is now moving to dissolve the program after a three-year review of the school's curriculum.
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The FDA is expected to authorize the Pfizer vaccine for 12 to 15-year-olds. Security ramped up for Jerusalem Day parade. Experiment could restore vision for some patients with genetic disorders.
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It's been one week since a section of Mexico City's massive metro system crashed, killing 26 people. Officials say a foreign company has been hired to investigate the fatal collapse.
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Biden supports waiving intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines. Judge strikes down federal eviction moratorium. Scottish voters cast ballots in an election that could lead to independence.
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Dr. Sumit Ray, critical care chief at a New Delhi hospital, is on the front lines of India's growing COVID-19 crisis. "As a system in different parts of the country, we have collapsed," he says.
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Partition split India and Pakistan in 1947 and affected millions of lives across decades. Journalist Anjali Enjeti's new novel explores the way people who don't process their trauma can pass it on.
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As part of NPR's series on democracy, Morning Edition visits Rochester, N.Y., to observe how the national debate around "defund the police" is playing out among city leaders.
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The death toll in the pandemic continues to rise in India. Dozens of people have died in a stampede in Israel. Examining Kamala Harris's role in these first 100 days of the Biden administration.
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Biden highlights wins in speech to Congress. Federal authorities raid the New York apartment of Rudy Giuliani. Three men are indicted on federal hate crime charges in the Ahmaud Arbery killing.
