Melissa Block
As special correspondent and guest host of NPR's news programs, Melissa Block brings her signature combination of warmth and incisive reporting. Her work over the decades has earned her journalism's highest honors, and has made her one of NPR's most familiar and beloved voices.
As co-host of All Things Considered from 2003 to 2015, Block's reporting took her everywhere from the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the heart of Rio de Janeiro; from rural Mozambique to the farthest reaches of Alaska.
Her riveting reporting from Sichuan, China, during and after the massive earthquake in 2008 brought the tragedy home to millions of listeners around the world. At the moment the earthquake hit, Block had the presence of mind to record a gripping, real-time narration of the seismic upheaval she was witnessing. Her long-form story about a desperate couple searching in the rubble for their toddler son was singled out by judges who awarded NPR's earthquake coverage the top honors in broadcast journalism: the George Foster Peabody Award, duPont-Columbia Award, Edward R. Murrow Award, National Headliner Award, and the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi Award.
Now, as special correspondent, Block continues to engage both the heart and the mind with her reporting on issues from gun violence to adult illiteracy to opioid addiction.
In 2017, she traveled the country for the series "Our Land," visiting a wide range of communities to explore how our identity is shaped by where we live. For that series, she paddled along the Mississippi River, went in search of salmon off the Alaska coast, and accompanied an immigrant family as they became U.S. citizens. Her story about the legacy of the Chinese community in the Mississippi Delta earned her a James Beard Award in 2018.
Block is the recipient of the 2019 Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism, awarded by the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, as well as the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fulbright Association.
Block began her career at NPR in 1985 as an editorial assistant for All Things Considered, and rose through the ranks to become the program's senior producer.
She was a reporter and correspondent in New York from 1994 to 2002, a period punctuated by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Her reporting after those attacks helped earn NPR a George Foster Peabody Award. Block's reporting on rape as a weapon of war in Kosovo was cited by the Overseas Press Club of America in awarding NPR the Lowell Thomas Award in 1999.
Block is a 1983 graduate of Harvard University and spent the following year on a Fulbright fellowship in Geneva, Switzerland. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband — writer Stefan Fatsis — and their daughter.
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President Obama announces Tuesday that he is sending 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan over the next six months, administration sources say. At a speech from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., Obama is expected to also discuss how long he thinks the U.S. mission will last.
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President Obama is expected to outline his strategy in Afghanistan in a televised appearance next Tuesday. The announcement is expected to be followed soon by testimony on Capitol Hill by senior Obama administration officials.
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A U.N. backed panel moved Monday to throw out a significant numbers of ballots cast for President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan's disputed presidential election. The findings were sent to the country's electoral commission, which will decide whether to hold a runoff between Karzai and his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah.
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A senior Mexican security official says a Bolivian religious fanatic told police he hijacked a flight from Cancun after receiving a divine revelation. The flight's passengers and crew were all safe.
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Firefighters made gains Tuesday on a blaze near Los Angeles. They set backfires and removed brush in an attempt to contain a 190-square-mile wildfire that has destroyed more than 50 homes.
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Congress may be taking a break for August, but the debate over a health care overhaul isn't. It's just changing venues. For the next five weeks, arguments for and against the plans being put together by President Obama and congressional Democrats will be waged on the airwaves and in individual states and members' districts.
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President Obama makes his first address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday amid economic anxiety. Obama is expected to talk about his own budget and other challenges facing his fledgling administration.
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President Barack Obama traveled to Denver Tuesday to sign the economic stimulus bill. Approved by Congress on a largely party-line vote last week, the bill is designed to inject nearly $800 billion into the economy through tax cuts and new federal spending.
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President Barack Obama hit the road again Thursday, hoping to cement the deal for his stimulus bill. But while he was in Illinois, his nominee for Commerce secretary, Judd Gregg, withdrew his nomination over "irresolvable conflicts." The GOP senator from New Hampshire cited differences over the stimulus plan.
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Senators announced a compromise between House and Senate negotiators on the economic stimulus package. Some House Democrats are upset that money for states and schools had been removed from the measure, but backed the deal.