NEWS from
CENTENARY COLLEGE OF LOUISIANA


Scott Simon

Centenary Invites National Public Radio's Scott Simon to Deliver 1998 Commencement Address

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (3/98)
Contact: Lynn Stewart or Amy Boltinghouse, Centenary News Service
318-869-5120 or 869-5709

SHREVEPORT, LA -- National Public Radio's Peabody Award-winning correspondent Scott Simon will bring a well-traveled perspective when he speaks at Centenary College's commencement exercises at 2:30 p.m. May 9 in the Gold Dome.

Since joining NPR in 1977 as chief of its Chicago Bureau, Simon has reported from 49 states, covered presidential campaigns and six wars, and reported from Central America, Africa, India, the Middle East, and the Caribbean.

He has served as a co-anchor for NBC's Today Show, as an essayist and commentator on NBC's Weekend Today, and has been a frequent guest host of the CBS television program Nightwatch and CNBC's Live Talk. In addition, he has hosted many public television programs, including the current series Life on the Internet and State of Mind, the newsmagazine American Pie, the series Search for Common Ground, and specials on privacy in America and democracy in the Middle East.

He has also narrated documentaries, hosted public television's coverage of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, participated in the Grammy-Award nominated 50th anniversary remake of The War of the Worlds, written for The New York Times Book Review and Opinion sections, and for The Angeles Times.

Simon has received numerous honors for his reporting. These include the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award in 1992, a George Foster Peabody Award for his radio essays in 1989, the Presidential End Hunger Award for reports on the 1987-1988 Ethiopian drought, a 1986 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, a 1986 Silver Cindy for a report on conditions at the Immigration and Naturalization Service's detention center in Harlingen, Texas, a 1982 Emmy for the public television documentary The Patterson Project, a Unity Award in Media in 1978 for political reporting on NPR's All Things Considered, and a Major Armstrong Award in 1979 for his coverage of the American Nazi Party rally in Chicago.

The son of entertainers, Simon grew up in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Montreal, Cleveland and Washington, D.C. He attended the University of Chicago and McGill University. He will speak to a graduating class of about 200 and an audience of about 2,000 during Centenary's annual commencement ceremonies.

Centenary, founded in 1825, is the oldest privately chartered college west of the Mississippi River. It is a private liberal arts institution that is regularly listed among the nation's best college values.

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