Helene Cooper, a Pentagon correspondent for The New York Times, will speak at 7 p.m. Monday, May 4, in the auditorium of O’Shaughnessy Educational Center on the St. Paul campus of the University of St. Thomas.
Helene Cooper
Cooper is the fourth and final speaker in this year’s Minnesota Public Radio News’ Broadcast Journalist Series, which is co-sponsored by the St. Thomas College of Arts and Sciences, its Communication and Journalism Department, and by Thomson Reuters.
She will be interviewed on stage that evening by Tom Weber, co-host of “The Daily Circuit” for Minnesota Public Radio News.
Prior to her Pentagon assignment, she covered the White House and was the newspaper’s diplomatic correspondent. She joined The New York Times in 2004 as the assistant editorial page editor, a position she held for two years before she returned to news. She has reported from 64 countries, from Pakistan to the Congo.
Previously, Cooper worked for 12 years at the Wall Street Journal, where she was a foreign correspondent, reporter and editor, working in the London, Washington and Atlanta bureaus. She is the winner of the Raymond Clapper award for Washington reporting (2000), the Sandy Hume award for best reporter under the age of 35 (2001), the Missouri Lifestyle award for feature writing (2002), a National Association of Black Journalists award for feature writing (2004) and the Urbino Press Award for foreign reporting (2011).
Born in Monrovia, Liberia, she is the author of The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood (Simon and Schuster), a New York Times best seller and a National Books Critics Circle finalist in autobiography in 2009. In 2009 and 2010, she appeared on the TV quiz show, "Jeopardy!," as a clue. She also has appeared on "Meet the Press," "Washington Week," "The Tavis Smiley Show," "The Chris Matthews Show" and "This Week."
She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Last fall she was interviewed on National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” program about the trip she took to her native Liberia to cover the Ebola epidemic.
Students, staff and faculty from the five Associated Colleges of the Twin Cities (including St. Thomas) are admitted for free at the door on the evening of the program. Just present your college or university ID to the usher at the entrance of the O’Shaughnessy Educational Center auditorium.
General admission tickets are $12 for Minnesota Public Radio members and $15 for nonmembers. Ticket information, along with directions for parking on or near the St. Thomas campus, is available at this website.
Now in its 20th year, Minnesota Public Radio's Broadcast Journalist Series commissions renowned journalists for a 24-hour residency four times a year. They share insights on their craft and issues that affect our world.
