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Renée Montagne

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Renée Montagne
Montagne in 2019
BornDecember 1948 (1948-12) (age 75)
Oceanside, California, United States
NationalityAmerican
EducationUniversity of California, Berkeley
OccupationNPR Investigative Correspondent
Years active1973–present

Renée Montagne (/mɒnˈteɪn/) is an American radio journalist and was the co-host (with Steve Inskeep and David Greene) of National Public Radio's weekday morning news program, Morning Edition, from May 2004 to November 11, 2016. Montagne and Inskeep succeeded longtime host Bob Edwards, initially as interim replacements, and Greene joined the team in 2012.[1] Montagne had served as a correspondent and occasional host since 1989.[2] She usually broadcasts from NPR West in Culver City, California,[2] a Los Angeles suburb.

Early life

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Montagne was born in December 1948 in Oceanside, California,[3] into a Marine Corps family.[2] As is common in the lives of children of career military families, she moved often while growing up, including living in Hawaii and various places on the West Coast.[2][3] An alumna of Cupertino High School, she was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 2012.[4] She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Berkeley in 1973[5] with a degree in English.

Career

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Montagne got her start in radio as news director for KPOO community radio in San Francisco while attending UC–Berkeley. She also worked for Pacific News Service in San Francisco.[2]

From 1980 through 1986, she worked in New York City as a freelance reporter and producer for both NPR and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. During this period, she covered the arts and science for NPR. From 1987 to 1989, she was co-host with Robert Siegel of NPR's evening news magazine, All Things Considered.[6]

In 1990, Montagne covered the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in South Africa. She remained in South Africa for three years focusing on the area, where she won, along with the NPR reporting team, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for their coverage of South Africa's first fully democratic elections.[7]

Montagne (far left) interviewing British Brigadier General David Paterson in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2010

In May 2004, Montagne and Steve Inskeep became interim co-hosts for NPR's Morning Edition, replacing long-time host Bob Edwards who was reassigned as a senior correspondent.[8] They became permanent co-hosts in December 2004.

The following year, Montagne went to Rome to cover the funeral of Pope John Paul II for NPR's Morning Edition. She also has traveled frequently to Afghanistan to report on the war that began in 2001. She has been recognized by the Overseas Press Club for her work from Afghanistan.[2]

In 2011, Montagne was among the news anchors who attended the traditional off-the-record luncheon with the U.S. president (in this case, Barack Obama) in advance of his State of the Union Address.[9]

The announcement went public on July 18, 2016, that Montagne would be leaving NPR's Morning Edition after co-hosting it with Steve Inskeep for 12 years.

Her final Morning Edition as co-host was November 11, 2016. A month later, as Special Correspondent/Occasional Host for NPR News, Montagne embarked on a new project: an NPR/collaboration called Lost Mothers.

Montagne, along with ProPublica reporting partner Nina Martin, spent the next year investigating why women are far more likely to die due to giving birth in the U.S. than all other developed nations.

Their investigation focused on why the maternal mortality rate in the U.S. is going up while it's going down in nearly every other nation; why African-American women are 3-to-4 times more likely to die than white women; and what's being done to reverse these dire statistics. The series set off a national conversation at a time when few Americans knew that, in the U.S., even a healthy woman with a perfect pregnancy and good health care risks dying, or nearly dying, in childbirth.

The stories, aired and published from 2017 through mid-2018, has been credited with inspiring laws in several states, as well as bills at the federal level aimed at protecting birthing mothers. In a 2018 Forbes op-ed[10] arguing for a federal law to end America's “maternal death epidemic,” Senator Tammy Duckworth cited the NPR/ProPublica investigation Lost Mothers. Duckworth also linked directly to Montagne's NPR story on how California succeeded in cutting in half its maternal mortality rate. On 12/21/2018 HR 1318 “Preventing Maternal Deaths Act” was signed into law – a law that incorporated the Senate bill Duckworth had championed in the op-ed.

Awards and recognition

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References

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  1. ^ "David Greene". People at NPR. NPR. Retrieved 2015-09-30.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g "Renee Montagne". People at NPR. NPR. Retrieved 2011-01-27.
  3. ^ a b "Not your average day job". Arizona Daily Sun. November 20, 2008. Retrieved 2011-01-27.
  4. ^ "CHS Hall of Fame 2012". May 2012.
  5. ^ "The Cal Alumni Association Announces the 2010 Alumnus of the Year Richard N. Goldman '41". University of California, Berkeley. December 18, 2009. Retrieved 2011-01-27.
  6. ^ "All Things Considered Gets New Co-hosts". The New York Times. March 18, 1987. Retrieved 2011-01-27.
  7. ^ a b "All duPont-Columbia Award Winners". www.journalism.columbia.edu. 2014. Archived from the original on 14 August 2012. Retrieved 18 December 2014.
  8. ^ "Bob Edwards forced out of 'Morning Edition'". NBC News. 23 March 2004. Retrieved 17 December 2011.
  9. ^ "Which anchor scored the best seat at lunch with Obama?". The 1600 Report (blog). CNN. January 25, 2011. Archived from the original on February 21, 2011. Retrieved 2011-01-27.
  10. ^ "Sen. Tammy Duckworth: How We Can End the Maternal Death Epidemic". Fortune. Retrieved 2019-06-30.
  11. ^ news, in In the (6 March 2018). "NPR and ProPublica Win the 2018 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting from Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center". Retrieved 2019-06-29. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  12. ^ "George Polk Awards | LIU". liu.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-29.
  13. ^ "The Best Stories of 2017". www.peabodyawards.com. 9 May 2018. Retrieved 2019-06-29.
  14. ^ "Health Equity Journalism Prize | New York Academy of Medicine". nyam.org. Retrieved 2019-06-29.
  15. ^ "National Academies Announce Winners of 2018 Communication Awards". www8.nationalacademies.org. Retrieved 2019-06-30.
  16. ^ "Announcing the 2017 Sigma Delta Chi Award winners". www.spj.org. Retrieved 2019-06-30.
  17. ^ "2018 Salute to Excellence Winners - National Association of Black Journalists". www.nabj.org. Retrieved 2019-06-30.
  18. ^ ProPublica (2018-04-16). "ProPublica/NPR Collaboration a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting". ProPublica. Retrieved 2019-06-30.
  19. ^ "2018 National Edward R. Murrow Award Winners". rtdna.org. Archived from the original on 2019-06-19. Retrieved 2019-06-30.
  20. ^ "Ellies 2018 finalists announced". ASME. Retrieved 2019-06-30.
  21. ^ Holt, Sid, ed. (December 2018). The Best American Magazine Writing 2018. Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231548656.
  22. ^ "The 100 Most Engaging Stories of 2017". Chartbeat Blog. 2017-12-19. Retrieved 2019-06-30.
  23. ^ "2015 Gracies Winners". Alliance for Women in Media. 17 March 2016. Retrieved 2019-06-30.
  24. ^ "Global Women's Rights Awards 2016". www.feminist.org. Retrieved 2019-06-30.
  25. ^ "Estlow Center honors reporter for coverage of diverse communities". University of Denver Magazine. 2008-04-10. Retrieved 2019-06-30.
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Media offices
Preceded by Host of Morning Edition
2004 – 2016 (co-host with Steve Inskeep) 		Succeeded by
Rachel Martin and Noel King
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