UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — An award-winning broadcast journalist who has covered politics and other news for more than four decades will present the commencement address for the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State during undergraduate commencement exercises May 10 at the Bryce Jordan Center.
Judy Woodruff, senior correspondent for “PBS News Hour,” launched “America at a Crossroads,” a reporting project to better understand the country’s political divide, in 2023. Her career has included positions at CNN, NBC and PBS through the years. Commencement exercises begin at 1 p.m.
Woodruff has earned numerous awards, including the Peabody Journalistic Integrity Award, the Poynter Medal, an Emmy for Lifetime Achievement and the Radcliffe Medal during her career. She and the late Gwen Ifill were together awarded Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism after they were named co-anchors of the “PBS NewsHour” in 2013, marking the first time an American national news broadcast would be co-anchored by two women.
For 12 years, Woodruff served as anchor and senior correspondent for CNN, where her duties included anchoring the weekday program, “Inside Politics.” 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 weekly documentary series, “Frontline with Judy Woodruff.”
In 2011, Woodruff was the principal reporter for the PBS documentary “Nancy Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime.” And in 2007, she completed an extensive project for PBS and other news outlets on the views of young Americans called “Generation Next: Speak Up. Be Heard.”
In 2006, Woodruff 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. From 2006 to 2013, she anchored a monthly program for Bloomberg Television, “Conversations with Judy Woodruff.”
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.
Woodruff is a founding co-chair of the International Women's Media Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging women in communication industries worldwide. She serves on the boards of trustees of the Freedom Forum and the Duke Endowment. Formerly she was a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Urban Institute, and a member of the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
Woodruff is a graduate of Duke University, where she is a trustee emerita. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, journalist Al Hunt, and they are the parents of three children.