Don Gonyea, NPR Biography
Correspondent, White House, Washington Desk
Correspondent Don Gonyea has been reporting for NPR since 1986, and took over the White House beat in 2001. His reports on the Presidency of George W. Bush are a fixture on all NPR programs and at npr.org. Gonyea is also a regular substitute host for the NPR newsmagazines including Morning Edition. In November of 2006 he co-anchored NPR's coverage of historic elections when Democrats captured control of the US House and Senate. Lately he's been traveling with the Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls for 2008.
In 2000, Gonyea chronicled the controversial Presidential election and the ensuing legal recount battles in the courts. He was at the White House on the morning of September 11th, 2001, providing live reports following the evacuation of the building. He has covered the administration during wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. During the 2004 campaign, he traveled with President Bush and Democratic nominee John Kerry. He has filed stories from around the globe, including Moscow, Beijing, London, Islamabad, Doha, Budapest, Seoul, San Salvador, and Hanoi. Gonyea was present at President Bush's first ever meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin in Slovenia in 2001, and for subsequent, at times testy meetings between the two leaders in St. Petersburg, Shanghai, and Bratislava.
Before moving to the White House, Gonyea worked out of Detroit where he reported on labor unions and on an automobile industry beset by global change. He has spent countless hours on picket lines and in union halls covering strikes, including numerous lengthy work stoppages at GM in the late 1990s.
Gonyea has reported on the development of alternative fuel and hybrid-powered automobiles, and on a variety of other issues, including such diverse topics as Dr. Jack Kevorkian's assisted-suicide crusade and the 1999 closing of Detroit's classic Tiger Stadium — the ballpark of his youth.
Over the years Gonyea has been a contributor to PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, the BBC, CBC, AP Radio and the Columbia Journalism Review. He also periodically teaches college journalism courses.
Gonyea has won numerous national and state awards for his reporting, and was part of the team that in 2000 earned NPR a George Foster Peabody Award—broadcasting's highest honor—for "Lost & Found Sound," a series on All Things Considered.
A native of Monroe, Michigan, Gonyea is an honors graduate of Michigan State University.
