Alison Stewart


Alison Stewart is an American journalist and author. Stewart first gained widespread visibility as a political correspondent for MTV News in the 1990s.

Early life and education

Stewart was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. She is the daughter of the senior vice president for corporate affairs at Squibb Corporation, the pharmaceutical company in Princeton, New Jersey. Her mother taught biology at Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey.
Stewart attended Brown University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and American literature. She began her broadcasting career there, where she was the music director for the school's radio station, WBRU.

Career

20th-century

In 1988 Stewart began her career as an assistant at MTV. In 1991, she joined MTV News as a segment producer when she was hired by MTV News Director Linda Corradina. She began reporting and producing during MTV's first "Choose or Lose" campaign, which covered the 1992 presidential race. Her coverage earned her a Peabody Award.
Stewart remained at MTV for much of the 1990s, contributing segments to other MTV News shows including Megadose and MTV News: Unfiltered. She also hosted specials including the Real World Reunion in 1995.
Stewart left MTV and moved to CBS News in December 1996. While there, she reported for several of the network's news programs, including CBS News Sunday Morning, 48 Hours, and Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel.

21st-century

Moving to ABC News, she co-anchored its early morning news program, World News Now with Anderson Cooper, and also contributed reports to Good Morning America and 20/20 Downtown.
In 2003, Stewart moved from ABC News to MSNBC where she was a daytime anchor and primary substitute host for Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddow Show. She occasionally filled in as newsreader on NBC's Weekend Today. From May 2006 to April 2007, she hosted a daytime news program The Most with Alison Stewart on MSNBC. Stewart married MSNBC Vice President of Programming Bill Wolff in November 2006.
Stewart joined NPR in May 2007 to host a morning drive show called The Bryant Park Project, which targeted adults between ages 25 and 44. The program premiered October 1, 2007 and was canceled effective July 25, 2008. She returned from maternity leave to host the show's last week, starting Monday, July 21, 2008.
Stewart served as a panelist on NPR's Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me! and served as fill in host of NPR's Talk of the Nation and Weekend Edition.
On May 7, 2010 she became the co-host of the new show Need to Know on PBS. She left the show on September 9, 2011; in her departure announcement she said she would be finishing a book she had "been working on for years."
In late 2011, Stewart went back to CBS News and reported a story for 60 Minutes that aired on January 1, 2012. In 2012, she hosted the first season of the “TED Radio Hour,” a radio program produced by TED and NPR.
In 2013, her book First Class, a history of Dunbar High School, was published. It was named one of the best books of 2013 by Mother Jones and Essence magazines. Her second book, JUNK: Digging Through America's Love Affair with Stuff, was published in April 2016.
Stewart returned to PBS as a special correspondent and as a fill-in anchor for NewsHour Weekend and Charlie Rose.
In September 2018, Stewart was added to the WNYC line up hosting a midday show called "All of It with Alison Stewart."

Works