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Journalist Judy Woodruff, anchor of PBS NewsHour, to keynote Hellinger Awards Luncheon

Sep 03, 2021

Broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff, anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour, will give the keynote talk at St. Bonaventure University’s 2021 Hellinger Awards Luncheon.

The 61st Annual Mark Hellinger Award Ceremony and Luncheon, hosted by the university’s Jandoli School of Communication, will recognize the 2021 and 2020 Hellinger Award winners and honorable mentions and pay tribute to four Jandoli School graduates.

Judy Woodruff The luncheon will be held Monday, Oct. 11, at the National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW, Washington, D.C., beginning with a reception at 11:30 a.m.

Honorees will include 2021 Hellinger Award winner Michael Hogan and honorable mention Jeffrey Uveino; 2020 winner Cameron Hurst and honorable mention Layne Dowdall; SBU alumnus/alumna of the year Charlie Specht, ’10, and Danica Roem, ’06; and two recent additions to the Jandoli School’s Wall of Distinguished Graduates: Jackie Trescott, ’68, and Joan Roeben Licursi, ’65.

Keynote speaker Woodruff has covered politics and other news for five decades at NBC, CNN and PBS. At PBS from 1983 to 1993, she was the chief Washington correspondent for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. From 1984 to 1990, she also anchored PBS’ award-winning documentary series, “Frontline with Judy Woodruff.”

Moving to CNN in 1993, she served as anchor and senior correspondent for 12 years; among other duties, she anchored the weekday program “Inside Politics.” She returned to the NewsHour in 2007, and in 2013, she and the late Gwen Ifill were named the first two women to co-anchor a national news broadcast. After Ifill’s death, Woodruff was named sole anchor.

In 2011, Woodruff was the anchor and reporter for the PBS documentary “Nancy Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime.” And in 2007, she completed an extensive project on the views of young Americans, titled “Generation Next: Speak Up. Be Heard.” Two hour-long documentaries aired on PBS, along with a series of reports on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, NPR, in USA Today and on Yahoo News.

From 2006 to 2013, Woodruff anchored a monthly program for Bloomberg Television, “Conversations with Judy Woodruff.” She has also held visiting professorships. In 2006, she was a visiting professor at Duke University’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. In 2005, she was a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

At NBC News, Woodruff was White House correspondent from 1977 to 1982. For one year after that, she served as NBC’s Today Show chief Washington correspondent. She wrote the book “This is Judy Woodruff at the White House,” published in 1982 by Addison-Wesley. Her reporting career began in Atlanta, Georgia, where she covered state and local government.

Woodruff is a founding co-chair of the International Women’s Media Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging women in journalism and communication industries worldwide.

She serves on the boards of trustee of the Freedom Forum, The Duke Endowment and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and is a director of Public Radio International and the National Association to End Homelessness. She is a former member of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, a former director of the National Museum of American History and a former trustee of the Urban Institute.

Woodruff is a graduate of Duke University, where she is a trustee emerita.

She is the recent recipient of the Radcliffe Medal, the Poynter Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism, the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism from Arizona State University.

She was inducted into the Georgia Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame and received the Leonard Zeidenberg First Amendment Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association and the Duke Distinguished Alumni Award, among others.

To register to attend the luncheon, sponsor a current St. Bonaventure student’s attendance, or support the luncheon as an event, program, dessert or table sponsor, visit www.sbu.edu/2021hellinger.

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About the University: The nation’s first Franciscan university, St. Bonaventure University is a community committed to transforming the lives of our students inside and outside the classroom, inspiring in them a lifelong commitment to service and citizenship. In 2020, St. Bonaventure was named the #2 regional university value in New York and #3 in the North by U.S. News and World Report.