Joan Shorenstein Barone

With her family, Phyllis Shorenstein established the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. The center was named in honor of her daughter, a journalist and radio news producer who died of cancer in 1986. Joan Shorenstein Barone was born in San Francisco in 1947. She attended Mills College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and did graduate work at Harvard Divinity School. While in graduate school, a fascination with politics led her to enroll in a study group at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, which was taught by then–IOP Fellow David Broder. Broder was so impressed with Joan’s enthusiasm and ability that he recommended her for a job as a political researcher at the Washington Post the following year, 1970. In 1973, when Watergate was the top news story in the country, Joan left the Post to join CBS News. A year after starting at CBS Joan was made an associate producer of Face the Nation (she was to be appointed producer in 1979); the following year, 1975, she married political correspondent Michael Barone. After the 1984 presidential campaign, during which she was a CBS News producer specializing in politics, she joined the Washington staff of The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather as a producer. Joan held this position until the cancer she had fought for 10 years finally claimed her life in 1985. She was 38 years old.