Influenced by activist parents and a childhood spent in the American South at the height of the civil rights era, John Siceloff devoted his journalism and television career to digging beneath the headlines to uncover stories connected to the lives of everyday people. According to his family, his was a life dedicated to "solutions-oriented journalism and educational empowerment."
Siceloff, MA '82, died March 6 at his home in Dutchess County, N.Y., of prostate cancer. He was 61.
Siceloff's parents ran the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, S.C., a nonprofit founded in 1862 to educate former slaves at the start of the Civil War. A hundred years later, the Penn Center was at the forefront of the American civil rights movement, promoting social justice and offering safe sanctuary to guests including Martin Luther King Jr. and interracial groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Peace Corps. After attending a Quaker boarding school, Siceloff obtained degrees from Swarthmore College and Stanford. He began his career as a freelance journalist reporting from locations around the world for outlets such as BBC-TV and The MacNeil /Lehrer Report. He worked as a bureau chief for CBS News in El Salvador and NBC News in Nicaragua during times of intense conflict.
In 2001, in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, Siceloff helped create Now with Bill Moyers, a weekly series on PBS focused on current affairs. He remained at PBS after Moyers's departure in 2004, and the program broadened its scope and became Now with host David Brancaccio. In 2008, Siceloff co-authored Your America: Democracy's Local Heroes, a book featuring many of the individuals profiled on Now.
According to his sister, Mary, Siceloff's upbringing at the height of the civil rights era had a profound impact on his career. "Our parents ran a center for social change where black and white could meet in community for the first time," she says, "and it played an important role in John's view of American 'short form' broadcast news. John looked past the big stories and profiled everyday people doing extraordinary things. He was truly a champion for a better future."
Siceloff won six nationalEmmy Awards, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, a Peabody Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club and the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism. In 2009 he founded Catch the Next, a nonprofit to help at-risk college students in Texas, and he was CEO of JumpStart Global Media, a production company for organizations working for social change.
Siceloff is survived by his wife, Birgit; son, Andrew; and his sister.
Julie Muller Mitchell, '79, is a writer in San Francisco.
