Steve Hartman

(CBS News) 

Steve Hartman has been a CBS News correspondent since 1998, having served as a part-time correspondent for the previous two years.

Hartman brings viewers moving stories from the unique people he encounters and the special places he visits as he travels around the country for his weekly feature "On the Road" which airs Fridays on the "CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley." "On the Road" is modeled after the long-running, legendary series of the same name which was originally reported by one of America's greatest TV storytellers, the late newsman Charles Kuralt.

Hartman is also well known for his multiple award-winning feature series, "Everybody Has a Story." Hartman proved the adage by tossing a dart at a map of America and then randomly picking an interview subject from the local phone book. Debuting in 1998, and continuing for the next seven years, Hartman produced more than 120 such pieces. In 2010, Hartman reprised the series on a global scale. In partnership with NASA, each "Everybody in the World Has a Story" segment began with an astronaut in the International Space Station spinning a globe and pointing to random locations for Hartman to travel and find a story. In one month's time, Hartman went completely around the world twice.

He has won many prestigious broadcast journalism awards for his work: an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award, an Emmy Award for writing and four RTNDA/Edward R. Murrow Awards, including three consecutive citations for Best Writing.

Previously, Hartman was a columnist for "60 Minutes Wednesday" and was a correspondent for two primetime CBS News magazines, "Public Eye With Bryant Gumbel" (1997-98) and "Coast to Coast" (1996-97).

Before that, he was a feature reporter for KCBS-TV, the CBS owned station in Los Angeles (1994-98). His daily segment on the KCBS early evening newscast looked at offbeat stories and personalities in Southern California and earned him numerous awards.

Hartman also was a feature reporter for WABC-TV New York (1991-94) and KSTP TV Minneapolis (1987 91). He began his career in broadcast journalism at WTOL TV Toledo, Ohio, as a news intern and general assignment reporter (1984-87).

All told, Hartman has collected nearly two dozen local Emmy Awards for writing, reporting and editing.

Hartman was graduated from Bowling Green State University in 1985 with a degree in broadcast journalism. He lives in Catskill, New York.

[YoungerRSTA]

Dear Steve Hartman,
Please do not go through with your story on Jim O'Hara candidate for Governer in Montana from Chouteau County. He is not as supported as you may have been lead to believe.
I have dealt with Jim O'Hara for eleven (11) years now and he has not assisted our community during these years.
Our area has flooded every year since 2005, he didn't follow permitting procedures for DNRC during the replacement of bridges along with other Gov. entities as recently with FEMA this year when several bridges were damaged yet again in the floods.
Our roads were completely washed out this year, repairs made were temporary fixes leaving us to drive on what most would consider a creek bed. Huge boulders in the road instead of gravel causing damage to the residents vehicles, additionally numerous tire blow outs.
Since 2005 I have taken pictures of the damage and the shoddy jobs attempted to fix said damages. I would be happy to share these photos and videos.
Steve, we live in a very rural area, our road is considered a secondary state road and is gravel, it has a state speed limit of 70 mph. The state would provide a "free" traffic/speed study to the county, Mr. O'Hara will not take advantage of this free study. We have 17 young children living on our gravel road. Mr. O'Hara does not seem interested in protecting our children and will not submit the request for the road study. NOTE: We are a bus route and mail route, our roads are to be maintain according to the state. (MDOT)
The last conversation I had with Mr. O'Hara, he wanted to talk about the years he has been sober, not about our road/community concerns.
He will leave a community member in mid conversation to speak with someone who has a check in their hand.
Mr. O'Hara prides himself on how much money he has saved the county. That is because he has let the community go to ruins along with our roads.
Please, do not give him attention that he does not deserve.
Thank you for you time Mr. Hartman
Tracy Younger
Highwood, Montana 59450
[phone]

[MLCrowley]

Hi sir .

I was watching your story on the man who gave so much to his town. Woody Davis is his name. I loved the story. then I melted down. I had to watch it at least 10 times just to try to see what my mind did' not want to believe. I'm 47 years old and this is the first time I wept over a story from TV.. thank you so much for warming my heart sir god bless you and woody Davis.

[trackdoctor]

Steve,

The Power of a Thank You.

Thank you for your piece featuring my book, Scats and Tracks of the Rocky Mountains! Yours is a great piece, even without tracking animal feces. Also your friend has excellent taste in literature, please thank him.

As soon as your piece aired, I started receiving calls from around the U.S. because each year, I teach 100s of people about scat (www.tracknature.com) and interpreting track stories especially of rare carnivores (www.TrackSceneInvestigation.com). My students and colleagues were impressed with your choice of books to feature.

Steve, let me offer you a special invitation to visit my upcoming workshop, Cougars in the Northeast: Ecology and Verification. You would be my personal guest at no charge for any or all of the workshop.

The workshop is in your neighborhood at Ndkinna Education Center (www.ndkinnacenter.org) about an hour and a half north of Catskill in Greenfield Center, NY. Dates are February 11 and 12, 2012. I will also give an evening lecture the night, Friday, February 10, called Wilderness Forensics: Solving mysteries through tracks and signs. Of course all this ties to scat. Incidentally, Jim Burchac, director of Ndkinna, is co-author of Scats and Tracks of the Northeast.

You may check out myself or Jim Bruchac at www.Halfpenny.me or www.jamesbruchac.com) respectively.

Also you have a standing invitation to visit the Track Education Center (TrEC) at my home base on the edge of Yellowstone National Park (YNP), Gardiner, MT. TrEC houses the largest track collection in the U.S. and probably the world; over 10,000 footprint casts and images. Of course, there are also scat collections.

With YNP as my front yard providing access to tracking many species of carnivores, we are ideally situated to teach amateurs and professionals ancient skills and modern sciences of tracking. Each year from this base and through my travels around North America I teach tracking, carnivores, cold environments (alpine, Arctic, winter), and climate change. My audience, those who wish to go back to and to learn about nature while sharing a concern about the future of our planet.

Keep on tracking my friend,

Jim Halfpenny, PhD, President
A Naturalist's World
(4060 223-1579) - cell phone
P.O. Box 989
Gardiner, MT 59030

[rich2777]

Steve,

Please don't stop telling stories about the people, the animals (like Bella & Tara) and other things in our lives that help us realize the human race is really not that bad after all. We're in need of a lot of improvement, but as your stories remind us, we
have done some good along the way. Thank you very much!

[CharlestonIllinois]

Below is a letter a friend just wrote about another friend, Brian Myerscough from Charleson, IL. Hope you can help.

Several years ago I worked at a factory in Charleston, Illinois called Oce`. during that time I worked with a man named Brian Myerscough. One day while sitting at his desk, another worker driving a fork truck, knocked a stack of pallets over. Those pallets pinned Brian to his desk.... When we got to Brian he was in a bad way. He was being crushed under pallets. As a result of that incident Brian is now confined to a wheelchair, paralyzed. In an agreement CEO Jan Dix agreed to provide Health Insurance to this man. He recently received a letter telling him he will no longer have that insurance. This is morally and on so many other levels WRONG. What kind of company goes back on an agreement like that? I say one that I would nev...er do business with again. They are obviously heartless and greedy. I am asking everyone I know to boycott all Canon products and photographers and anyone else who may use Canon. With facebook I am sure the word will spread. To do this to this man right at the holidays is an unspeakable act and reflects what is wrong with the United States economy today. Lack of morals from big companies. Companies like you are killing the American people with your lack of morals, and your greediness. I'm sure the person that wrote Brian the letter could afford to pay his insurance out of his own pocket many times over. I am going to spread the story of what has happened to Brian as far as I possibly can. I would hope the loss of business will cost the company many times over what it would cost to provide this man who lost so much, the cost of health insurance. Hopefully someone will come to their moral senses and continue to provide health insurance for this man. Steve, please check into this!!

[melissamocogni65]

Steve, thank you so much for finally giving Suncoast High School (Fla) the attention they deserve by doing a story on their production of Romeo and Juliet tomorrow night. This school is such a joy to have my daughter in who has excelled academically thanks to the rigorous schedule the school has put in place which has made it one of the top ten public schools in the country for a number of years, now. I have heard their production of Romeo and Juliet is absolutely outstanding. I'm not surprised. These kids know Shakespeare so well because of the standards this school upholds. SHS is all about academics. Not sports or clothes or cars. FYI: The biggest event every year at SHS is the end of the year announcement of rankings; who's number 1, 2 and 3. That's how competitive these kids are. I have never experienced a school like this and even went as far as to contact CNN to ask them to do a story on the school that Palm Beachers refer to as "the school in the Ghetto." You will see that the neighborhood surrounding the school has absolutely no negative effect on the academics whatsoever, in fact, I think it motivates the kids who live there to work even harder to get out of the area. Thank you, thank you, thank you for giving this school some much needed publicity. Other schools could learn so much from them!!!!!!!

[FelineAficionada]

I loved your your coverage of Tara and Bella-I was wondering what happened to Bella, and I feel you covered the story with such a balance of information and compassion for Tara and Dog lovers everywhere! I will keep my eye open for more of your work!

[rich2777]

I'm most sorry to say, sometime during October on the 2500-acre Elephant Sanctuary at Hohenwald, Tn. coyotes supposedly killed Bella. And, according to one of the curators at the sanctuary, from what he could discern, Tarra apparently had carried Bella's body about a mile, just to bring Bella back to the main office. I just wish I had better news...

[cosmicapple]

Thanks Steve, your stories are sometimes the only bright spot in the news.
Jack Williams,a news anchor at WBZ TV in Boston, has a story worthy of Assignment America. He has had a weekly segment, Wednesday's Child which has aired for thirty years and features a child or siblings in need of an adoptive home. Most of these children are physically or intellectually challenged.
The Wednesday's Child Foundation, established by Jack and his wife is an enormous success and has just celebrated its thirty year anniversary with a reunion of many of the hundreds of children and families he they have brought together. It's a story worth sharing.

[friesfan1]

I am wondering where Steve Hartman is as well. I miss watching him on Monday nights. Would like to see him back on his usual time slot!

[aaronjlenz]

Mr. Hartman, I just wanted to let you know that I revisit your story about Jason whenever I need a reminder of the good in this world. Many people have told and retold the same story, but not to the same effect as your own. Thank you for providing us this wonderful piece.