About Ron Steinman

About Ron Steinman

Ron Steinman began his career at 23 at NBC News and spent 35 years at the network. He moved from copyboy to producing segments and writing for the Huntley Brinkley Report, in Washington, then in New York in the 1960s, and as a field producer for the newsmagazine “Chet Huntley Reports.” Over the next three years, he produced documentaries on everything from the European Common Market to baseball spring training and worked on instant specials, including space coverage, before being named NBC’s Bureau Chief in Saigon in 1966 where he covered the war in Vietnam for 30 months. He later served as Bureau Chief and a producer in Hong Kong and London before returning to New York headquarters as general manager of the network news specials, including NBC’s extensive coverage of Watergate. In 1975 he joined the “Today Show” where he spent 11 years in senior producing positions in Washington and New York, including overseeing political coverage and the production of all the “Today Show’s” live weeklong broadcasts from such places as China, Moscow, Seoul and all overseas Presidential trips. Before leaving NBC in 1992, he spent three years at “Sunday Today” producing 70 segment reports. During 6 years as a freelance producer for ABC News, he wrote and produced A&E Biography’s on O.J. Simpson, Malcolm X, Colin Powell, Timothy McVeigh, LBJ, Frank Sinatra, Nelson Rockefeller, and James Earl Ray. He produced Intimate Portraits for Lifetime Television, documentaries for the Discovery Channel, and the History Channel. He produced 3 of the highly rated, award winning 6 part series for The Learning Channel on the Vietnam War called “The Soldiers’ Story.” He produced and wrote the documentary “Dak To” and also “Missing in Action” that won a National Headliner Award and an International Documentary Festival Award. He is the author of “The Soldiers’ Story” published in 1999 by TV Books and now by Sterling Publishing. That book in a profusely illustrated edition, a new introduction and many new chapters, published by Wellfleet Publishing will be in stores in September 2015. His book “Women in the Vietnam” was published in 2000 and is available as a Nook e-book from Barnes&Noble. “Inside Television’s First War: A Saigon Journal” was published in 2002 by University of Missouri Press. That book under the title “A Saigon Journal: Inside Television’s First War” with new chapters is now published by KCM Publishing and available on all platforms. He is the author of the novel, “Death in Saigon.” All his books are available online through Amazon and Barnes&;Noble. Among his many awards, Steinman has won a Peabody Award, a National Press Club award, two American Women in Radio & Television Awards, and has been nominated for five Emmy’s,one for his coverage of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. He was the executive editor and a columnist for the online magazine “The Digital Journalist,” and the executive editor and a columnist for the online magazine, “The Digital Filmmaker.” He is a partner in Douglas/Steinman Productions with offices in New York. He directed the documentary, “Luboml: My Heart Remembers” that was on PBS’s WLIW/21 in 2003 and is available on DVD. He also directed the film, “My Grandfather’s House” seen frequently on the Documentary Channel in 2006 and 2007. Both films are available on DVD through his company’s distributor The Cinema Guild. Douglas/Steinman Productions recently completed “The Dance Goodbye,” about ballerina Merrill Ashley and her struggle to find her next step after retiring from The New York City Ballet. The film is in distribution on DVD by First Run Features.
Douglas/Steinman is currently developing and raising funds for its latest project called “97 Orchard,” about a New York tenement building on the Lower East Side and the ethnic foods brought to America by immigrant families in the late 19th Century and the early 20th Century.