Bill Buzenberg Biography

Bill Buzenberg, the executive director of the Center for Public
Integrity in Washington, D.C., was the speaker for the eighth annual
Huck Boyd Lecture in Community Media Sept. 20, 2007, at Kansas State
University. The topic of Buzenberg's address was "Independent Media
Matter — To You and the World." The purpose of the lecture is to
recognize the role of community journalists in helping to keep their
communities strong.
Buzenberg became executive director of the watchdog investigative
journalism organization, the Center for Public Integrity, in January
2007. He has been a correspondent, editor, and news executive at
newspapers and in public radio for more than 35 years.
Most recently, as senior vice president of news at American Public
Media / Minnesota Public Radio, Buzenberg launched such programming
initiatives as American RadioWorks, public radio's major documentary
and investigative journalism unit, and Speaking of Faith, public
radio’s signature program on religion. He also began Public Insight
Journalism, an innovative use of technology to draw knowledge from the
audience.
Buzenberg was vice president of news and information at National
Public Radio from 1990 to 1997. He was responsible for launching Talk
of the Nation, as well as the expansion of All Things Considered and
the extension of NPR's newscasts services to 24 hours a day. During his
tenure, the NPR News Division was honored with nine DuPont-Columbia
Batons and 10 Peabody Awards. Buzenberg joined NPR in 1978 as the first
reporter to help start Morning Edition. For 11 years, he was a foreign
affairs correspondent based mostly in Washington, D.C. He was named
London bureau chief in 1986 and became NPR's first managing editor in
1989.
He began his journalism career in newspapers, working for a brief time
for the Manhattan Mercury and the Topeka Daily Capital, as well as for
five years on the Colorado Springs Sun where he was City Editor in the
early to mid 1970s.
Buzenberg was a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia from 1968 to 1970.
He has won numerous awards, including the prestigious Edward R. Murrow
Award, public radio's highest honor. He was co-editor of the memoirs of
the late CBS News President Richard Salant. Salant, CBS, and the
Battle for the Soul of Broadcast Journalism was published in 1998 by
Westview Press.
A Manhattan, Kan. native and graduate of Kansas State University,
Buzenberg has also studied at the University of Michigan as part of its
mid-career professional journalism fellowship program, in the M.A.
program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced
International Studies in Bologna, Italy, and as a Fellow at the
Institute of Politics at Harvard University's Kennedy School of
Government.