Lisa Simeone

Lisa Simeone (born July 11, 1957) is an American freelance radio host and writer. She was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She attended St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, the so-called "Great Books school," from where she graduated in 1980 with a Bachelor's in Liberal Arts. She began her radio career as a classical music host at WBJC in Baltimore, moving on to WETA in Washington, DC, then to WJHU in Baltimore. In 1996, after ten years at WJHU, she left to pursue full-time studies in The Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University, graduating with a Master's Degree in 1997.

Throughout her radio career, she has hosted hundreds of live and taped broadcasts, encompassing classical music, jazz, folk, opera, news, interviews, and call-in shows. She also has extensive TV experience, as a host, interviewer, and guest on news and cultural affairs programs. From 1998 to 2000, she was a regular host of NPR's Performance Today and 'Weekend Edition Sunday. She then became full-time host of NPR's Weekend All Things Considered, a job she held from 2000 to 2002. She left in March 2002 to return to freelancing. Shortly after, she began hosting NPR World of Opera. She also returned to hosting and writing for the independent (non-NPR) radio documentary series Soundprint, which she had done earlier in her career before she was hired at Weekend All Things Considered.

In 2007, Simeone began hosting the weekly Chicago Symphony Orchestra Broadcast Series, produced and syndicated by the Chicago radio service WFMT.

NPR ceased production of World of Opera in 2010, whereupon classical music station WDAV in Davidson, North Carolina took up production of the series.

In October 2011, Simeone became involved in the Occupy movement. Because of this activity, she was fired from Soundprint, on October 19, 2011. The firing was for alleged NPR ethics code violations, which prohibit political activism by journalists, though she was not working for NPR at the time, in any capacity, nor receiving any salary or payment from the network; neither was Soundprint an NPR program. She was also not a news reporter. According to The Huffington Post:

Simeone, who lives in Baltimore, said she has been serving with about 50 people on a steering committee for an occupation protest on Pennsylvania Avenue [in Washington, D.C.] that's known as the October 2011 Movement. She said it is not connected to the Occupy Wall Street movement, but that they share similar philosophies.

Following Simeone's firing from Soundprint, NPR also stopped distributing World of Opera. WDAV, which produces the show, immediately began distributing the program itself. Simeone remained as host.

In addition to her radio work with World of Opera and the CSO, Simeone also does narrations and commercial voice-overs. She has written for Baltimore City Paper, The Urbanite, and The Baltimore Sun and is Beauty Editor at Style Magazine. She also writes Style's blog Glamour Girl. Simeone is a lifelong political activist. One of her current volunteer activities is running the civil liberties watchdog site TSA News, which tracks the abuses committed by the Transportation Security Administration. She lives in Baltimore.

See also

• Occupy Wall Street

External links

• Lisa Simeone – Profile on World of Opera site
• October 2011 Movement website