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Anthony Brooks

Anthony Brooks has more than twenty five years of experience in public radio, working as a producer, editor, reporter, and most recently, as a fill-in host for NPR. For years, Brooks has worked as a Boston-based reporter for NPR, covering regional issues across New England, including politics, criminal justice, and urban affairs. He has also covered higher education for NPR, and during the 2000 presidential election he was one of NPR's lead political reporters, covering the campaign from the early primaries through the Supreme Court's Bush V. Gore ruling. His reports have been heard for many years on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.

Beyond NPR, Brooks has also worked as a senior producer on the team that helped design and launch The World for Public Radio International. He was also a senior correspondent for InsideOut Documentaries at WBUR in Boston. His piece "Testing DNA" and "The Death Penalty-InsideOut" won the 2002 Robert F. Kennedy Award for best radio feature. Over the years, Brooks has won numerous other broadcast awards, including the Edward R. Murrow Regional Broadcasters Award, the AP Broadcasters Award, the Ohio State Award, and the Robert L. Kozik Award for environmental reporting for his Soundprint documentary, "Chernobyl Revisited."

Beyond his reporting, Brooks is also a frequent fill-in host for NPR's On Point as well as Here and Now, produced by WBUR, and for NPR's Day to Day.

In 2006 Brooks was awarded a Knight Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan, where he spent a year of sabbatical studies focusing on urban violence and wrongful convictions.

Brooks grew up in Boston, Italy, and Switzerland.

  • Research suggests less than 5 percent of students at America's top colleges and universities come from low-income families. Many of these elite institutions recognize the problem and are taking steps to boost economic diversity on campus -- such as offering full scholarships for underprivileged students. NPR's Anthony Brooks reports.
  • Critics of a federal law that denies federal student aid to anyone convicted of a drug offense push for the alteration or revocation of the 1998 measure. The law's opponents -- including its writer, Rep. Mark Souder, say it unfairly penalizes students for past drug use and treats marijuana possession more harshly than murder. NPR's Anthony Brooks reports.
  • The Department of Education relaxes some requirements of the No Child Left Behind law. The changes include allowing core-subject teachers at rural schools to have an additional year to show they are "highly qualified." The deadline was previously the 2005-2006 school year. Hear NPR's Anthony Brooks, NPR's Michele Norris and Schools Superintendent Jack Broome of Burke, S.D.
  • In the 1970s, the average heroin user was 28 to 30 years old and an urban dweller. Today, the average addict is a white, middle-class teenager. As the profile of heroin users has changed, so has the drug, which is more potent than ever. NPR's Anthony Brooks reports on the new generation of users in the first of a five-part series on this growing addiction crisis.
  • For the men, women and families of Fort Carson, Colo., Sunday's attack on a Chinook helicopter in Iraq was the worst combat loss since the Vietnam War. The army base has lost 21 soldiers during U.S. operations in Iraq. One soldier killed in Sunday's attack, Sgt. Ernie Bucklaw, was headed home for his mother's funeral. NPR's Anthony Brooks reports.
  • A review of the murder of convicted pedophile priest John Geoghan in prison -- and his general treatment while incarcerated -- suggests that the problems that led to his death are widespread in Massachusetts prisons. Low-risk inmates are being placed in maximum-security lockups with violent inmates. NPR's Anthony Brooks reports.
  • Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) confirms that he will seek the Democratic presidential nomination. Kerry has campaigned and raised money for more than a year. The official announcement comes as he trails rival New England Democrat Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, in early polls for the critical New Hampshire primary. NPR's Anthony Brooks reports.
  • Fifteen-year-old Anthony Brooks tells the story of his relationship with his sixth-grade teacher, who died tragically during the school holidays. He says Tanya Figueroa pushed him to be his best. Anthony Brooks comes to us through Radio Rookies at member station WNYC.