Connecticut Foundation for Open Government
For Immediate Release l February 1, 2022
Contact: info@ctfog.org
The Connecticut Foundation for Open Government is excited to announce that Judy Woodruff, the highly respected managing editor and anchor of PBS NewsHour, will be honored with CFOG’s Walter Cronkite Award in recognition of her extraordinary contributions to government transparency and an informed citizenry.
At an April 7 ceremony at the Mark Twain House and Museum, Woodruff will become the seventh person to receive the prestigious award. The Walter Cronkite Award is named in honor of its first recipient, and other past awardees include journalist Bob Woodward, First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, and the late Jim Lehrer, who had also occupied the NewsHour anchor chair.
“We are thrilled to add Judy Woodruff to the list of distinguished honorees,” said CFOG President William S. Fish, Jr. “At a time when reasoned discourse can be hard to find, Judy’s intelligent, balanced and comprehensive delivery of the news is a breath of fresh air. We can’t imagine a more worthy recipient of the Cronkite Award.”
The April 7 awards dinner is open to the public, with tickets available at https://ctfog.org/cronkite-awards/. A limited number of institutional sponsorships are also available.
Woodruff began her reporting career in Atlanta, covering state and local government, and later covered the White House and Washington for NBC News. In 1983 she moved to PBS, spending a decade as chief Washington correspondent for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour while also anchoring the PBS series “Frontline with Judy Woodruff” during most of those years.
She joined CNN in 1993, serving as an anchor and senior correspondent, before returning to the NewsHour in 2007. 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 in 2016, Woodruff was named sole anchor.
Woodruff and the NewsHour have won countless awards in pursuit of the show’s stated mission to provide civility, objectivity and thoughtful reporting and analysis. Woodruff is also a founding co-chair of the International Women’s Media Foundation – an organization dedicated to promoting women in journalism and communications – and serves as a director or trustee of several other nonprofits. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, journalist Al Hunt, and they are the parents of three children: Jeffrey, Benjamin and Lauren.
The Connecticut Foundation for Open Government is a nonprofit organization founded in 1992 by Connecticut citizens interested in promoting open government and the public’s right-to-know. Its programs are carried out by a volunteer board of directors drawn from the news media, academia, the law, business and government.