Steven Herman

Position:

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Email: steven.herman@su.edu

Educational History:

B.A., Thomas Edison State University; M.A., Mountain State University

Fields of Expertise:

broadcast journalism; presidential politics; digital and online media; Asian geopolitics; foreign policy

Professional Highlights:

Steven L Herman is the chief national correspondent for 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. Steve 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 at Ohio University. He was also named the JURIST Journalist in Residence at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law for 2022-23 He is also an adjunct lecturer in the journalism department at the University of Richmond.

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), the war in Afghanistan (2007-2010), 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). He has reported from dozens of other countries and territories.

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 appears frequently on other broadcast networks and channels around the world to analyze American politics and geo-political events.

Research:

Steve’s latest book, “Behind the White House Curtain: A Senior Journalist’s Story of Covering the President — and Why It Matters,” is to be published in June of 2024 by Kent State University Press.

Personal Highlights:

Articles, columns and reviews by Steve have been published in numerous newspapers and magazines including the Far Eastern Economic Review, Harvard Summer Review, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Japan Quarterly, Japan Times, Number 1 Shimbun, On the Air, Popular Communications, Public Diplomacy Today, Proceedings (U.S. Naval Institute), Radio World, Shukan Bunshun, Shukan Gendai, South China Morning Post and the Wall Street Journal.

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 as a district representative on the Stafford County Telecommunications Commission. Steve is an East West Center media alumnus, a First Cohort of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and a member of the AEJMC, Authors Guild, the National Press Club, the Public Diplomacy Council of America, SAJA, SPJ and the White House Correspondents Association.