Steve Hartman

Biography

Steve Hartman is an award-winning American broadcast journalist best known for his long-running "On the Road" segment for CBS News, where he highlights the extraordinary stories of ordinary people. For decades, he has been the network's primary purveyor of uplifting, human-interest storytelling, often closing the CBS Evening News and CBS Sunday Morning with tales of kindness and community. In 2026, Hartman has garnered critical acclaim for a major departure from his typical brand. He is the producer and on-screen subject of the documentary short "All the Empty Rooms", which has been nominated for the 2026 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film. Released on Netflix in late 2025, the film chronicles a seven-year project where Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp visited families of school shooting victims to document the bedrooms their children left behind. Hartman stated he pursued the project to "shake the country out of its numbness" regarding gun violence. Despite this heavier focus, Hartman remains a staple of CBS News. throughout 2025 and 2026, he continued to air his "On the Road" segments and his educational series "Kindness 101", which he originally developed with his children during the pandemic. In April 2026, he is scheduled to receive the Robert D. and Billie Ray Pillar of Character Award, recognizing his career-long commitment to promoting civility and integrity in media. His previous signature series, Everybody Has a Story—where he threw a dart at a map and found a story in the random town it landed on—remains a benchmark for broadcast journalism, earning him multiple Edward R. Murrow Awards.