Veteran TV news journalist Judy Woodruff has earned many honors over her lengthy career in TV news, including the Peabody Journalistic Integrity Award, the Poynter Medal, an Emmy for Lifetime Achievement and the Radcliffe Medal, among others. Woodruff can now add another honor to her resume: Fred Dressler Leadership Award.
Woodruff, the former anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour and now a senior correspondent for the newscast, will be honored by Syracuse University’s Newhouse School with its Fred Dressler Leadership Award. The Dressler Award is given at the school’s annual Mirror Awards ceremony to individuals or organizations that have made distinct, consistent and unique contributions to the public’s understanding of the media.
One likely knows Woodruff’s backstory at this point: She and the late Gwen Ifill joined PBS NewsHour in 2009 while the late Jim Lehrer was still anchor. Lehrer retired from NewsHour in 2011, passing the baton to Woodruff and Ifill, who were named PBS NewsHour co-anchors on a permanent basis in 2013. The duo remained co-anchors of NewsHour until Ifill’s passing in November 2016. Woodruff became the solo anchor and managing editor of PBS NewsHour in 2018, a role she kept until the end of 2022.
She remains engaged with NewsHour despite no longer serving as its anchor. This year and next, she is undertaking a reporting project, America at a Crossroads, to better understand the country’s political divide.
Prior to her time at PBS, Woodruff co-hosted CNN’s Inside Politics along with the late Bernard Shaw. She covered national politics and the White House for NBC News in the 1970s and 80s before that, and her coverage of politics goes back to 1972 for Atlanta station WAGA-TV.
The 2023 Mirror Awards will take place Monday, June 12 at New York’s Edison Ballroom.
Past Fred Dressler Award recipients have included Univision Noticias anchor Jorge Ramos; former HBO Documentary Films and Family executive producer and president Sheila Nevins; former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw; and former New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet.