UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Charles Bierbauer, a Penn State alumnus whose career in journalism took him all over the world and who later became a leader in higher education, died Friday, Aug. 29. He was 83.
Bierbauer worked for CNN in Washington, D.C., and around the world from 1981 to 2001. He covered the Pentagon and was the network’s senior White House correspondent for nine years during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
He later became a senior Washington correspondent, focused on the presidency, policy and politics. He also covered presidential campaigns and the Supreme Court between 1984 and 2000.
Bierbauer traveled with presidents to all 50 states and more than 30 nations and served as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association from 1991 to 1992.
He won an Emmy Award for his coverage of the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta. He also won an Overseas Press Club Award in 1973 for his reporting on the Yom Kippur War.
Bierbauer earned bachelor’s degrees in journalism and Russian at Penn State in 1966. He added a master’s in journalism from the University in 1970.
He grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and started his career there as a radio reporter for WKAP. He later worked for the city’s newspaper and for The Associated Press in Pittsburgh.
His career as an international journalist included time with ABC News, where he served as a bureau chief in Moscow and later Bonn, Germany. He also worked in London and Vienna and was denounced by the Soviet press for “asking impertinent questions” while covering Muhammed Ali’s travels to the Soviet Union in 1978.
In 1980, Bierbauer was named an Alumni Fellow, the most prestigious award given by the Penn State Alumni Association, and he was honored in 1991 with a Distinguished Alumni Award, the University’s highest honor for alumni.
As a Penn State student, he was a resident assistant and earned the Steinman Journalism Award.
As an alumnus, he was an active and regular participant in the Penn State Washington Program and a member of the Hetzel Circle Club.
After Bierbauer retired from CNN in 2001, he became the first dean of the University of South Carolina’s College of Mass Communications and Information Studies in 2002. He left that role in 2017.
Bierbauer died at home in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. He’s survived by his wife, Susanne Schafer, who became the first female Associated Press correspondent covering the Pentagon in 1989.
They couple has four children, one of whom, Kari Braido, earned her bachelor’s degree from Penn State in 1996. They also have grandchildren, two of which are currently undergraduates studying in the Smeal College of Business.