Steven Herman
-
Profile
Steven L Herman is the chief national correspondent of the Voice of America. From early 2017 through August of 2021, Steve was senior White House correspondent and subsequently VOA's White House bureau chief. He spent more than a quarter of a century in Asia, including years of reporting from Tokyo and subsequently as a VOA correspondent and bureau chief in India, South Korea and Thailand. Steve also served in 2016 as VOA's Senior Diplomatic Correspondent, based at the State Department and traveling to numerous countries with Secretary of State John Kerry.
Steve was one of 18 journalists from around the world who composed the Kiplinger Fellowship in Climate Change Reporting in 2022. He has also been the JURIST Journalist in Residence at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and a First Cohort of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.
Among the major news stories Steve has covered on scene over the decades include the Baneberry nuclear federal court trial (1979), MGM Grand Hotel fire (1980), Thai April Fool's coup (1981), Squeaky Fromme's prison escape (1987), the Kobe earthquake (1995), the Tokyo subway sarin attack (1995), handover of Hong Kong (1997), end of the Sri Lanka civil war (2009), the Fukushima nuclear disaster (2011), Typhoon Haiyan (2013), Thai coup (2014), the Erawan Shrine bombing (2015) and the Gorkha earthquake (2015).In addition to years of reporting for AP, including as the wire service's state broadcast editor in West Virginia, Steve's career has also included stints as a media executive in Asia, launching Discovery Channel and Animal Planet in Japan. He was an executive producer of the 2004 documentary The History of America's Secret Casinos. Steve was also the field producer in Sichuan, China for the video news release for the Warner Bros. 1995 film The Amazing Panda Adventure.
Steve is a life member of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, of which he was elected president for the 1997-98 term. He also served as president of the Seoul Foreign Correspondents' Club and the Japan-America Club of The American University and is a former vice president of the DC chapter of AAJA. Steve was also previously on the board of governors of the Overseas Press Club of America. He currently serves on the board of governors of the American Foreign Service Association and is a member of the Authors Guild, the National Press Club, the Public Diplomacy Council of America, SPJ, SAJA and the White House Correspondents Association.
A native of Cincinnati, Steve began his media career in Las Vegas before moving to Asia. A lifelong learner who completed undergraduate or graduate level coursework at UNLV, The New School, University of Bath and the Harvard Extension School, Steve earned a B.A. at Thomas Edison State University, an M.A. in Public Diplomacy from Mountain State University and was awarded a journalist virtual fellowship by the LMU Loyola Law School.