Didrik Schanche

Didrik (Didi) Schanche (yes, it's pronounced "skan-kee"), is the senior editor for NPR's Weekend Edition.

Prior to this assignment in July 2011, Schanche was an editor on NPR's foreign desk, helping to coordinate coverage of issues of national security. She was also responsible for NPR's coverage of Africa and Latin America.

A journalist since 1981, Schanche got a rather unorthodox start in the business. Shortly after earning her B.A. from St. John's College in Annapolis, MD, in 1980, Schanche visited her parents in Egypt, where her dad, Don Schanche, was a foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. On the trip, she landed her first reporting job, as Cairo correspondent for The Jerusalem Post. Schanche may very well be the first journalist working for an Israeli newspaper accredited to work in an Arab country. The Camp David peace accords had been signed three years earlier and relations between Israel and Egypt were continuing to improve.

Schanche decided that reporting was fun, but she wanted a stronger foothold in the field. She returned to the United States and earned her master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1982. With the ultimate goal of being a foreign correspondent, Schanche spent several months banging on doors and eventually was hired by The Associated Press as a reporter based in Montgomery, Ala. Her determination and hard work eventually paid off. After two years, she was transferred to the foreign desk at AP headquarters in New York. Two years later, she was sent to Nairobi, Kenya, to cover East Africa.

Living and working in East Africa for seven years, Schanche produced news stories and features as East Africa Correspondent for the Associated Press from Sudan and Ethiopia in the north, to Zimbabwe and Zambia in the south. Much of the news in the region then, as now, concerned ethnic conflicts, civil war, drought, hunger, AIDS, and animals – such as coverage of elephant poaching. Schanche also produced two children while in Kenya.

From Africa, Schanche was transferred to AP's Middle Eastern headquarters then based in Nicosia, Cyprus, to edit copy from reporters and stringers throughout the Middle East. In 1995, she and her family returned to the United States. In 2001, Schanche made the jump from print reporting to radio and came to NPR, after several years as assistant foreign editor at The Washington Times.