Ina Jaffe

Ina Gail Jaffe (September 17, 1948 – August 1, 2024) was an American journalist. She was a longtime correspondent for NPR.^[1]

Jaffe was born in Chicago in 1948 to Charlotte Jaffe, an elementary school teacher, and Max Jaffe, a luggage manufacturer.^[2][3] She grew up in Glencoe.^[3] As a teenager, Jaffe sang and played guitar at coffeehouses in the city, and she began acting while attending New Trier High School.^[2][3]

Jaffe attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1972.^[2][3] She went on to obtain a master's degree in philosophy from DePaul University in 1977.^[2]

In the 1970s, Jaffe and her husband, Lenny Kleinfeld, were members of the Chicago Organic Theater Company.^[3][4] While working as an actress and waitress, Jaffe also wrote some pieces for the Chicago Reader.^[2][3] After becoming a journalist, Jaffe used her theater background to combine "dramatic narrative" with a matter-of-fact attitude.^[5]

Jaffe was an early member of NPR's Chicago bureau in the late 1970s.^[3][4] In 1983, Jaffe covered the election of Harold Washington, Chicago's first Black mayor.^[4][5]

In 1985, after moving to NPR's office in Washington, D.C., she became the first editor of NPR's Weekend Edition.^[2][4] She also appeared on All Things Considered and Morning Edition.^[2]

In the late 1980s, she moved to Los Angeles^[3] to work for NPR's Western Bureau in Southern California. There, she covered the 1992 Los Angeles riots and the 2003 election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor.^[2][5]

In her later years, Jaffe was NPR's correspondent on aging, telling stories about aging "with no cuteness or condescension".^[2][5] In 2011 and 2012 she broke a story about the Veterans Administration leasing portions of its West Los Angeles Medical Center campus to businesses that were not focused on serving veterans.^[1][3][5] Her reporting on the case won her awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Alliance for Women in Media.^[1] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Jaffe reported on its impact on nursing homes.^[2]

Jaffe married her husband, Lenny Kleinfeld, in 1969.^[2] The two had met while attending the University of Wisconsin.^[3]

Jaffe was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012, and with metastatic breast cancer in 2019. She wrote about the diagnosis publicly in 2021.^[2][6] She died from the cancer in Los Angeles, on August 1, 2024, at the age of 75.^[1][2]