Leroy Sievers (June 16, 1955 – August 15, 2008) was a journalist who won 12 national news

Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

s, two

Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...

s, and two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards. He was a commentator for

National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...

, served as a bureau chief for

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

news, served as an executive producer for the ABC program ''

Nightline ''Nightline'' (or ''ABC News Nightline'') is ABC News' late-night television news program broadcast on ABC in the United States with a franchised formula to other networks and stations elsewhere in the world. Created by Roone Arledge, the prog ...

'', and covered a variety of global conflicts as a war correspondent. Sievers was also part of the

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program entitled ''Living with Cancer'', hosted by his friend

Ted Koppel Edward James Martin Koppel (born February 8, 1940) is a British-born American broadcast journalist, best known as the anchor for ''Nightline'', from the program's inception in 1980 until 2005. Before ''Nightline'', he spent 20 years as a broadc ...

. This show was taped at the Discovery Channel Headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland on May 6, 2007, and featured other cancer survivors, including Elizabeth Edwards and

Lance Armstrong Lance Edward Armstrong ('' né'' Gunderson; born September 18, 1971) is an American former professional road racing cyclist. Regarded as a sports icon for winning the Tour de France seven consecutive times from 1999 to 2005 after recovering fr ...

. Born in San Marino, California, Sievers attended

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

but transferred to the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

, where he finished his undergraduate degree. He was married to Laurie Singer, a producer at

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Cancer

Sievers kept a

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...

and

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosin ...

, called My Cancer, on the NPR website; the blog dealt with his struggle with metastatic

colon cancer Colorectal cancer (CRC), also known as bowel cancer, colon cancer, or rectal cancer, is the development of cancer from the colon or rectum (parts of the large intestine). Signs and symptoms may include blood in the stool, a change in bowe ...

, with which he was diagnosed in 2006. The blog consists of Sievers's thoughts on his illness, as well as updates on his treatment and any scans and tests he underwent. His blog developed a large community of those currently diagnosed with cancer and cancer survivors, as well as their families and loved ones, many of whom who regularly commented on Sievers's posts, often offering him messages of love, support, and gratitude for having so openly shared his experiences on his blog. On June 9, 2008, Sievers announced that his latest scans had found new tumors in his brain, shoulder blades, liver, pelvis and lungs. Leroy planned to target the tumors in his brain and pelvis first, although he appeared to be running out of treatment options. On August 12, 2008, Sievers wrote on his blog that he and his wife had decided to pursue hospice care, which would allow others to help manage what remained of his life. Sievers died August 15, 2008.

Sources

''The New York Times''

References

External links

Leroy Sievers' MyCancer BlogMore about Leroy Sievers"Journalist, 'My Cancer' Blogger Leroy Sievers Dies"
American television news producers American war correspondents Deaths from colorectal cancer 1955 births 2008 deaths People from San Marino, California 20th-century American journalists American male journalists Television producers from California {{US-journalist-1950s-stub