CORRECTION APPENDED

The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy honored public broadcasting icon Gwen Ifill with the $25,000 Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism at the Harvard Kennedy School yesterday evening. [SEE CORRECTION BELOW]

Ifill—who is Moderator and Managing Editor of PBS’s Washington Week as well as the network’s senior correspondent for The News Hour—is “poised, accomplished, and wicked smart” and has worked “to break the insularity of Washington journalism,” said Shorenstein Center Director Alex S. Jones.

“She has made genuine diversity [in journalism] normal, allowing all kinds of people—African Americans, women, and young people alike—to appear on the longest-running primetime public affairs program on television,” Jones said of Ifill’s presence on Washington Week.

In her acceptance speech before an audience of Kennedy School affiliates and industry colleagues, Ifill said she was drawn to a career in journalism because she enjoyed “forcing people to answer questions and of getting answers to subjects that I knew nothing about.”

“I learned to treat race as an advantage, to see things that other didn’t, to talk to people that others wouldn’t, and to tell stories that others couldn’t,” she said, later explaining that she “was always drawn to stories about people who beat expectations, especially when those expectations were low...my favorite politicians are the underdogs, the underestimated, and even the ‘mis-underestimated’.”

In a forum discussion following the awards presentation, Ifill offered an anecdote that explained why she preferred the public broadcasting sector to a cable news network.

“At the Obama inauguration, I spoke to a woman who had fallen on her knees weeping because the ‘ceiling was off, the sky’s the limit.’ The video ran for 8 seconds on CBS but 55 seconds on public television,” she said. “Most people would not have asked for this woman’s opinion, but she captured the spirit of the people in the Mall that day.”

In closing, Ifill addressed concerns about the shrinking newspaper and broadcasting industry.

“We are remaking the industry,” she said. “But as long as people still have questions, journalism will be vital.”

Washington Post writers Debbie Cenziper and Sarah Cohen were also awarded the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting Prize for “Forced Out,” an exposé on the casualties of Washington D.C.’s real estate bubble. The two winners of the Goldsmith Book Prize were also honored.

CORRECTION

The Mar. 18 news article "Ifill Accepts HKS Journalism Award" incorrectly stated Gwen Ifill received $25,000 with the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism. In fact, that award had no prize money. A different award—the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting Prize, which went to Washington Post writers Debbie Cenziper and Sarah Cohen—came with $25,000.