MORNING EDITION

About the Show

For more than two decades, NPR’s Morning Edition has helped listeners prepare for their day with up-to-the-minute news, background analysis, commentary, and coverage of arts and sports.

Grab a cup of coffee and join local anchor Jennifer Stayton —and NPR’s Steve Inskeep and Renee Montagne—for the ideal kick-off to the day: mellow, but straightforward, Morning Edition breaks the latest news, demystifies the vagaries of international diplomacy, and even recommends the best film in town. Morning Edition proves that mornings and hard news can coexist. Whether the story breaks in Bosnia or Brooklyn, on-the-spot reporting and insightful commentary create a complete sonic picture.

Produced by NPR in Washington, D.C., Morning Edition draws on reports from correspondents based in 14 countries around the world, and producers and reporters in 19 locations in the U.S. Since its debut in 1979, the show has garnered broadcasting’s highest honors, including the George Foster Peabody Award and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award.

About the Hosts

Renee Montagne
From the NPR West studios in Culver City, California, Renee Montagne joins Steve Inskeep in Washington to host NPR’s Morning Edition. Montagne is a familiar voice on NPR; she has worked for NPR’s Science, National, and Foreign desks, and for two years, she co-hosted All Things Considered with Robert Siegel.

Montagne has conducted thousands of interviews on a wide range of topics: Kurt Vonnegut on how he wrote the classic anti-war novel Slaughterhouse Five; National Guardsmen on how they handle the holidays in Iraq; Paul McCartney on singing the old songs; a Hollywood historian on the famous hillside sign; and Bud Montagne, her father, remembering the attack on Pearl Harbor. In recent years, she traveled throughout Afghanistan, interviewing farmers and mullahs, women and poll workers, the President and a warlord to produce two series: “Recreating Afghanistan” (2002) and “Afghanistan Votes.” (2004)

In addition to the duPont Columbia Award, Montagne has received honors from the National Association of Black Journalists and Ohio State University. She also has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. She earned a B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

Steve Inskeep
Traveling from African oilfields to Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, Steve Inskeep has interviewed the survivors of disasters both natural and man-made. He has questioned Presidential candidates, warlords, authors, and musicians. He also interviews people who otherwise would be overlooked: a steelworker, a school board member, the mother of a soldier killed in war.

Inskeep’s first full-time assignment for NPR was the 1996 presidential primary in New Hampshire. He went on to cover the Pentagon, the U.S. Senate, and the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush. After the September 11 attacks, he covered the war in Afghanistan, the hunt for al-Qaida suspects in Pakistan, and the war in Iraq. In 2003, he was honored by the Press Club of Atlantic City with a National Headliner Award for investigating a military raid that went wrong in Afghanistan. NPR received Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton awards for its overall coverage of the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Raised in Carmel, Indiana, Inskeep is a 1990 graduate of Morehead State University in Kentucky, where he also worked as a radio sportscaster. His journalism has appeared in several publications, including The New York Times.

Jennifer Stayton
Born and raised in Austin, Jennifer Stayton has been the KUT “Morning Edition” host and reporter since April, 2004. She earned her Master’s degree in Radio-Television-Film from the Newhouse School of Communication at Syracuse University in 1994, and her interest in public radio began when she volunteered as a news reporter and anchor at Syracuse’s WAER. She went on to join the WAER staff in 1995 and eventually began hosting Morning Edition, as well as All Things Considered and Weekend Edition Saturday from time to time. In 2001, she returned to Austin and her high school alma mater – St. Stephen’s Episcopal School – as the Alumni Relations Director.

Visit the Morning Edition web site.

About Our Host

Julie Moody