Eric Westervelt
Correspondent
Correspondent-Editor Eric Westervelt has covered defining conflicts and major stories across the world and America for NPR News. He's served as a correspondent and Bureau Chief in Jerusalem, Baghdad and Berlin, covering the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, as well as conflicts across the Middle East including Israel-Palestine, Israel-Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the North African revolutions that swept Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. In Europe he covered everything from the economic crisis and migration to Bach's Christmas Oratorio.
Stateside Westervelt has reported on big breaking news stories such as mass shootings and natural disasters including catastrophic wildfires from California to West Maui and the deadliest mass killing in modern U.S. history. He's reported news features on everything from the homeless crisis and opioid addiction to a nonprofit that supports indigent blues musicians.
As an editor for NPR's National Desk Westervelt has worked with reporters across the Western U.S. and Texas. He also serves as an occasional guest host for NPR news shows, interviewing greats from Jimmy Carter to poet Claudia Rankine.
Additionally, Westervelt helped launch NPR's innovative, award-winning education platform NPR Ed and helped build a collaborative team that covers America's criminal justice system including state and local courts, prisons, juvenile justice and policing.
Westervelt was also a contributing producer for Pictures on the Radio, a photo and essay book honoring NPR journalist David Gilkey's award-winning photography and career. Gilkey was killed in a Taliban ambush while covering Afghanistan in 2016.
After nearly a decade with NPR's International Desk, Westervelt was awarded a prestigious Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University in 2013.
His work has been honored with broadcast journalism's highest honors including the 2002 George Foster Peabody Award for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the aftermath; the 2003 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award for the war in Afghanistan and for also for 2001 terrorist attacks; 2004 and 2007 duPont-Columbia Awards for NPR's in-depth coverage of the war in Iraq and its effect on Iraqi society. Westervelt's 2009 multimedia series on Israel's massive 439-mile West Bank wall with NPR's David Gilkey won an Overseas Press Club award. He also shared an Edward R. Murrow RTNDA award with NPR Ed for his coverage of education, teaching and learning.
Prior to his work overseas, Westervelt covered military affairs and the Pentagon out of Washington, D.C. reporting on a wide range of defense, national security as well as foreign policy issues. Before that he covered some of the biggest domestic stories as a reporter on NPR's National Desk covering everything from the mass killing at Columbine High School to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
A guitar player in his other life, he occasionally does music features including profiles and remembrances of musicians including rocker David Crosby, blues and rock greats Freddie King and Otis Rush, Eric Clapton and J. J. Cale, and Roy Orbison, and the enduring allure of the Fender Stratocaster. His feature on the making of John Coltrane's classic A Love Supreme was part of the NPR series on the most influential American musical works of the 20th century, which was recognized with a George Foster Peabody Award.
Before joining NPR, Westervelt freelanced in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest and worked as news director, host and reporter in New Hampshire for NHPR and as a contributing reporter for Monitor Radio, the broadcast edition of the Christian Science Monitor.
He is a graduate of the Putney School and Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
