Editor’s observe: Daniel C. Sneider, a lecturer of East Asian research at Stanford College, former overseas correspondent and pal of Mike Shuster’s, was the Moscow bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor within the Nineties when Shuster was based mostly there. He provides this appreciation:
Mike Shuster, an award-winning overseas and diplomatic correspondent for Nationwide Public Radio, died Monday. Throughout greater than three a long time as a reporter and an editor, his work spanned the world and made him an eyewitness to among the most momentous occasions in fashionable historical past.
Shuster died at house in Southern California of issues from Parkinson’s illness, his household stated. He was 76.
Shuster had an extended profession, starting within the early Seventies in Africa, the place he spent 5 months masking the Angolan civil conflict and traveled all through the area, working then for Liberation Information Service.
He joined NPR in 1980 and filed more than 3,000 stories, with protection spanning each Gulf wars, conflicts in Israel and Palestine, the Bosnian civil conflict and the conflict in Kosovo, and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
As a senior diplomatic correspondent, Shuster coated problems with nuclear nonproliferation and weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and the Pacific Rim. He notably traveled ceaselessly to Iran — no less than seven instances after 2004 — the place he was one of many few American correspondents to spend prolonged time.
Shuster started his profession with NPR in New York. In a now well-known case, his reporting on the trial of infamous mobster John Gotti led to a historic court docket choice enjoyable the FCC ban on the published of expletives after Shuster insisted that listeners wanted to listen to Gotti’s tirades recorded in an FBI wiretap.
He was despatched to London in 1989. From there, he coated the unification of Germany, from the announcement of the opening of the Berlin Wall to the institution of a single foreign money for that nation, which he later described as “probably the most extraordinary story in my lifetime.”
He traveled to Germany month-to-month throughout this time to hint the revolution, from individuals’s euphoria over the liberty to journey, to the decline of the Communist Occasion, to the newly unbiased nation’s first free elections.
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Throughout his time in London, Shuster additionally coated the primary Gulf Battle.
He had the chance to cowl one other historic second when he moved to Moscow in 1991 because the NPR bureau chief. He coated the top of Soviet communism, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the rise of the newly unbiased states. He traveled from the far reaches of Russia to civil war-ravaged Tajikistan.
As a diplomatic correspondent, Shuster formed NPR’s protection of the Center East, together with protection of the second Gulf Battle and the conflict in Iraq. He reported usually from Israel, masking the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah, the pullout from Gaza in 2005 and the second intifada that erupted in 2000.
He traveled ceaselessly to Iran, starting in 2004, together with on-the-scene reporting of the Iranian election of 2009 and the huge protests that adopted. His 2007 weeklong collection, “The Partisans of Ali,” explored the historical past of the Shi’ite religion and politics, offering a uncommon, complete take a look at the complexities of the Islamic faith and its impression on the Western world.
Shuster received quite a few awards for his reporting. He was a part of the NPR Information staff to be acknowledged with a Peabody Award for protection of September 11 and its aftermath. He was additionally a part of the NPR Information groups to obtain Alfred I. duPont-Columbia College Awards for protection of the Iraq Battle (2007 and 2004); September 11 and the conflict in Afghanistan (2003); and the Gulf Battle (1992).
In 2003, Shuster was honored for his collection “The Center East: A Century of Battle” with an Abroad Press Membership Lowell Thomas Award and First in Documentary Reporting from the Nationwide Headliner Awards. He additionally acquired an honorable point out from the Abroad Press Membership in 1999, and the SAJA Journalism Award in 1998.
Following his retirement from NPR in 2013, Shuster grew to become a contract producer and author, creating The Great War Project, a web site, weblog and podcast that recounted the historical past of World Battle I and its impression a century after its outbreak. He served on the President’s World Battle I Centennial Fee. He labored on a number of tv collection initiatives and was a senior fellow at UCLA’s Burkle Middle for Worldwide Relations.
Shuster is survived by his longtime companion, Stephanie Boyd, his brother Lee Shuster, and his nephew Cory Shuster and niece Amanda Shuster.
He was born on July 7, 1947, in Philadelphia, the son of Morris Merle Shuster and Beatrice Ritta Gerber Shuster. He attended Williams Faculty in Massachusetts.
