CBS Correspondent, Harwich Native Seth Doane To Speak In Benefit For Harwich Port Library

HARWICH – CBS senior foreign correspondent Seth Doane will return home next week to speak at a benefit for the Harwich Port LIirary, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2025. Doane is an award-winning journalist who has reported from more than 70 countries over his 25-year career.

“I thought it would make sense to focus my talk around the concept of ‘curiosity,’” he said, “looking at our shared desire to experience, travel, apprentice and learn about an issue, an historical event, a people, or a part of the world. I think curiosity is the most important qualification for the work I get to do as a correspondent for CBS News and Sunday Morning.”

He added, “Our interest in knowing more about an event, a person, or a news story drives the process of discovery and storytelling. The key is to try to find a way to make the most foreign of stories identifiable or interesting to the audience watching at home in America. I've been based overseas for about a dozen of the 25 years I've been in this line of work, and I find the challenge of telling foreign news stories to be particularly exciting.”

Doane is based in Italy and reports primarily for the CBS newsmagazine Sunday Morning and across all news platforms. He began working for major news outlets in 2000, reporting on stories from around the world. Doane won the Peabody Award for a series he created about the humanitarian crisis in Sudan.

He covered the mining accident and rescue of 33 Chilean workers trapped underground for 66 days; a typhoon and major destruction in the Philippines; a volcano eruption in Iceland; and he’s reported from Kuwait, North Korea, Italy, the Vatican, Bali, Senegal, Jordan, Russia, and many other countries.

A 12th generation Doane, he grew up in Harwich, the son of former State Senator Paul and Helen Doane. He is a 1996 graduate of Harwich High School, where he began his journalism career. As a member of the school’s TV club, Doane presented the Friday afternoon news.

“I do not think I'd have the career I do today without Jill Mason,” he said. “Jill and her I'd say visionary work of establishing a TV channel in Harwich for the community (originally us students at Harwich High School) laid the foundation and opened my eyes to a field of study that I'd continue and formalize at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles.

“Jill had us learn the entire process of TV production, and we did it at the most grassroots of levels, cablecasting live town meetings, gatherings of the planning board and other Harwich events. CBS' Sunday Morning is a long way from the storeroom-turned-studio at Harwich High (outfitted with my mom's tablecloth backdrop) where I got my start,” said Doane.

“Of course, Jill would continue to make stunning improvements in what became a channel that everyone could use. I was always impressed to return home to the Cape to see what she had done as the studio and control room grew and became far more professional than when we began with a camcorder and VCR,” he said.

Doane Knows the Harwich Port Library well.

“I grew up in Harwich Center so Brooks Free Library was located closer to home and on the walk to and from Harwich High School, but Harwich Port Library is a gem. We'd go there to check out books, I recall we had a fair share of 'story hour' reading events there when we were kids, and I remember performing at Harwich Port Library when I was in the ‘Junior Players,’ the traveling troupe from the Harwich Junior Theater."

It was at the Harwich Junior Theatre where he developed his confidence and love of theater. The theater was founded by Betty Bobp, a drama teacher at Wheelock College.

“She encouraged you to find yourself and then be the best version of yourself,” Doane said of Bobp.

Throughout his high school years, Doane remained involved in theater at HJT and in school.

“An Evening with Seth Doane” will take place at the South Harwich Meeting House on Thursday, Aug. 8 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $30. Light refreshments will be served and the opportunity to meet and chat with Doane will follow the presentation. Tickets may be purchased on Mondays and Fridays at the library at 49 Bank St., at Below the Brine bookstore in Harwich Port and on Eventbrite at www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-seth-doane-tickets-936476806337.