Marco Werman

Werman is currently a senior producer with Public Radio International's The World, covering music for the program and as a part-time host. Werman has been working in journalism since he was 16 when he worked as a copy boy at the News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. His journalism experience includes documentary photography, print, radio and television. A former Peace Corps volunteer, Werman got his start in radio while freelancing in Burkina Faso, West Africa, for the BBC World Service, where he later worked as a producer. "Radio impressed me in Africa," says Werman. "Everyone had one, broadcasts happened in many languages, and in the two coups I witnessed, the radio station was important booty: it and the electrical generator were always the first targets."

In 1990, he started up a new public radio station in the Adirondacks and hosted a daily two hour news and public affairs show there for four years. This was followed by a half year stint in Rome, Italy where he was the correspondent for Monitor Radio. In 1995, he was invited to assist in creating the format for The World, where he has worked since. In 1997, he began providing the Global Hit segment, in which musicians and musical trends around the globe are linked and used as a lens to understand the news. This segment has also become a popular podcast as part of the PRI News podcasts.

Werman has been the recipient of awards from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters for an original radio drama that he wrote; the Sony Awards for an exposé on child labor in West African gold mines; from the New York Festivals for a BBC documentary on the 1987 assassination of Burkina Faso's president; and the first annual Unity award from the Radio and Television News Directors Association for coverage of diversity issues.

In 2007, he won an Emmy for his story "Libya: Out of the Shadow" on the PBS program Frontline/World, about the 2006 total solar eclipse that brought thousands of tourists to Libya just after it had rejoined the community of nations. Werman was the first American television and radio journalist to go to Libya after Muammar al-Gaddafi renounced weapons of mass destruction in December 2003, a move that would lead to Libya losing its pariah state status.