From Ground Zero in New York to ground zero in Kabul, to police stations, subway platforms, and darkened theaters, NPR's Peabody-Award-winning correspondent Scott Simon brings a well-traveled perspective to his role as host of Weekend Edition Saturday.
Simon 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. In 2002, Simon took leave of his usual post at Weekend Edition Saturday to cover the war in Afghanistan for NPR. He has also reported from Central America on the continuing wars in that region; from Cuba on the nation's resistance to change; from Ethiopia on the country's famine and prolonged civil war; from the Middle East during the Gulf War; and from the siege of Sarajevo and the destruction of Kosovo.
Simon has received numerous honors for his reporting. His work was part of the Overseas Press Club and Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards NPR earned for coverage of Sept. 11 and its aftermath. He was part of the NPR news teams that won prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for covering the war in Kosovo as well as the Gulf War. In 1989, he won a George Foster Peabody Award for his weekly radio essays. The award commended him for his sensitivity and literary style in coverage of events including the murder of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador and the San Francisco earthquake. Simon also accepted the Presidential End Hunger Award for his series of reports on the 1987-1988 Ethiopian civil war and drought. He received a 1986 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for his coverage of racism in a South Philadelphia neighborhood, and a 1986 Silver Cindy for a report on conditions at the Immigration and Naturalization Service's detention center in Harlingen, Texas.
Simon received a Major Armstrong Award in 1979 for his coverage of the American Nazi Party rally in Chicago, and a Unity Award in Media in 1978 for his political reporting on All Things Considered. 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 been a frequent guest host of the CBS television program Nightwatch and CNBC's TalkBack Live. In addition to hosting Weekend Edition Saturday, Simon has appeared as an essayist and commentator on NBC's Weekend Today and NOW with Bill Moyers. He has hosted many public television programs, including “Voices of Vision,” “Life on the Internet,” “State of Mind,” “American Pie,” “Search for Common Ground,” and specials on privacy in America and democracy in the Middle East. He also narrated the documentary film "Lincoln of Illinois" for PBS. Simon participated in the Grammy Award-nominated 50th anniversary remake of The War of the Worlds (co-starring Jason Robards), and hosted public television's coverage of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Simon has hosted the BBC series Eyewitness, which was seen in the United States on the Discovery Channel, and a BBC special on the White House press corps. Simon was also a featured co-anchor of PBS's millennium special broadcast in 2000.
Simon has written for The New York Times' Book Review and Opinion sections, the Wall Street Journal opinion page, The Los Angeles Times, and Gourmet Magazine.
The son of comedian Ernie Simon and actress Patricia Lyons, Simon grew up in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Montreal, Cleveland, and Washington, DC. He attended the University of Chicago and McGill University, and he has received a number of honorary degrees.
Simon's book Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan was published in the spring of 2000 by Hyperion, a division of Disney. It topped the Los Angeles Times nonfiction bestseller list for several weeks, and was cited as one of the best books of the year in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and several other publications. His second book, Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball, kicked off the prestigious Wiley Turning Points series in September of 2002. Simon’s first novel, Pretty Birds, about female teenaged snipers in Sarajevo, was released in May 2005 to very strong, positive reviews.
In the summer of 2000, Simon married Caroline Richard. His hobbies are Mexican cooking, ballet, book collecting, and living and dying for the Chicago Cubs (and now the French national soccer team).
Scott Simon on KCRW
More from KCRW
At Intuit Dome, your face is your ticket and credit card
TechnologyThe Intuit Dome in Inglewood offers facial recognition for just about everything, from ticketing to concessions at concerts and Clippers games.
Gael García Bernal, Cheech Marin, and Rob Lowe on The Treat
ArtsGael García Bernal speaks on his new series “La Máquina,” Cheech Marin goes deep on Chicano art, and Rob Lowe has The Treat.
NYC dreampop band Ivy reflects on the long road to their 2000 LP ‘Long Distance’
MusicIvy broke out in the early 2000s with "Edge of the Ocean." As their album “Long Distance” makes its vinyl debut, the surviving members reflect on its creation.
Want to visit a custom-made haunted house? LA has hundreds
EntertainmentWhether you want to be just a little scared or pushed to the limit, LA has hundreds of different types of haunted houses. Vice Cooler, creator of Haunts of LA, is your guide.
Will Greta Gerwig’s ‘Narnia’ bring big changes to Netflix?; Roy Wood Jr. ‘pledges allegiance to the joke’
EntertainmentAs Greta Gerwig prepares to dive into production on her adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia, the director is attempting to persuade Netflix to release her film on thousands of IMAX…
Weekend film reviews: ‘Piece by Piece,’ ‘The Apprentice’
EntertainmentThe latest movie releases include Piece by Piece, The Apprentice, We Live in Time, and The Last of the Sea Women.
The rise and fall of the GTOs, the first girl group of Groupies
ArtsBy 1969, Pamela Des Barres was no longer a Valley teenybopper; she had transformed into a full fledged rock n roll icon-in-the-making.
Wiener dog races bring German spirit to Huntington Beach
AnimalsOktoberfest lasts all fall in Huntington Beach, where a small German neighborhood hosts annual dachshund races from June to December.
World Series: How much does it really cost to see the Dodgers v. Yankees?
SportsThe Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees face off for Game 1 of the World Series on Friday. KCRW breaks down how much it costs to attend.