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Loren Jenkins brings over 30 years of experience to his post as the Senior Editor of NPR's foreign desk.
Educated as a political scientist at the University of Colorado and Columbia University, Loren spent 25 years overseas as a foreign correspondent for UPI, Newsweek, and The Washington Post. During his time overseas he was variously based in London, Madrid, Paris, Beirut, Hong Kong, Saigon and Rome. The stories he covered ranged from assorted Middle East conflicts to the Vietnam War, from battles between India and Pakistan to the war between Iraq and Iran, the fall of the Shah of Iran and the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Intifada revolt in Israel.
Loren joined NPR in 1996 as Senior Foreign Editor in charge of the network's award-winning international coverage. Since coming to NPR, Foreign Desk reporters under Loren's leadership have won a Columbia-DuPont Award (for Anne Garrels coverage of Russia), a couple of Peabody Awards (for Charlayne Hunter-Gault's coverage of South Africa and, in 2002, for coverage of Sept. 11 and its aftermath), a number of Overseas Press Club awards (for foreign economic reporting as well as for environmental reporting and the OPC's prestigious Lowell Thomas award for the best radio news or interpretation of foreign affairs for its coverage of the war in Kosovo and, in 2002, another Lowell Thomas award for NPR's coverage of Sept. 11 and its aftermath..
Before coming to NPR, Loren was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his Washington Post coverage of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and its aftermath. He has also won an Overseas Press Club award for his coverage of the Lebanese Civil War for Newsweek. Loren was the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City in 1988-89. Jenkins' articles and reviews have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, Rolling Stone, Salon, Conde Nast Traveler, and The New York Times.
In between his time abroad as a foreign correspondent and his current job at NPR, Loren also served as publisher and editor-in-chief of his hometown newspaper, The Aspen Times, in Colorado. While there, he revitalized the struggling paper into a vibrant and successful prize-winning publication
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