Pioneering NBC and ABC News correspondent Sander Vanocur, longtime NPR news broadcaster Carl Kasell, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus and C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb will be inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Washington, D.C., Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, on June 12, 2012.
Carol Y. Dudley, Director of the Office of Career Development at Howard University's School of Communications, will be awarded the Chapter's Distinguished Service Award.
In addition, 70 Washington journalists will be honored as winners or finalists in the Chapter's annual Dateline Awards contest, which recognizes distinguished local journalism.
The Hall of Fame inductions, Distinguished Service Award presentation and Dateline Awards presentations will occur during a dinner at the National Press Club.
Sander Vanocur
Sander Vanocur began his journalism career as a London reporter for The Manchester Guardian, also working as a commentator for the North American Service of the BBC and a stringer for CBS News. He later reported for the New York Times before joining NBC News in 1957. He was one of the questioners in the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960 and then spent three years as White House Correspondent before being named National Political Correspondent, covering the 1964 and 1968 presidential elections. Beginning in 1969 he was host of the magazine program First Tuesday and also earned a place on President Nixon’s expanded enemies list.
Vanocur left NBC in 1971, to become Senior Correspondent for PBS. He went to ABC News in 1977 and later became Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, assigned to the State Department. In 1982, he covered the Falklands War between Great Britain and Argentina. He also was ABC's Chief Overview Correspondent during the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections. In 1986, Vanocur became anchor of ABC News' Business World program and covered the annual World Economic Summits. He left ABC in 1991 and since has devoted himself to teaching, lecturing, consulting and hosting programs for the History Channel and other organizations.
Carl Kasell
Carl Kasell spent ten years as morning anchor and later news director at WAVA Radio in Arlington, Va., before joining NPR as a part-time newscaster for Weekend All Things Considered in 1975. He became a full-time newscaster for Morning Edition at the program’s inception in 1979 and kept that position (and its brutal pre-dawn hours) for 30 years.
When NPR premiered its weekly news quiz show, Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me!, in 1998, Kassel took on the job of official judge and scorekeeper, a position he holds today. He is a member of the National Radio Hall of Fame and the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame.
Ruth Marcus
Ruth Marcus is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Post, specializing in American politics and domestic policy. Marcus has been with The Post since 1984. She joined the national staff in 1986, covering campaign finance, the Justice Department, the Supreme Court and the White House. From 1999 through 2002, she served as deputy national editor, supervising reporters who covered money and politics, Congress, the Supreme Court, and other national issues. She joined the editorial board in 2003 and began writing a regular column in 2006. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2007.
Earlier in her career, Marcus wrote for the National Law Journal. Later she graduated from Harvard Law School, after which she joined the Post.
Brian Lamb
Brian Lamb has interviewed every president since Lyndon Johnson. Following Navy service, he worked as a radio reporter, press officer and White House telecommunications staffer. In the 1970s he went to work for Cablevision and began publishing a newsletter called The Media Report. During those years he submitted to cable executives an idea for a non-profit channel that would broadcast Congressional proceedings.
The Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, or C-SPAN, began programming in 1979. The network receives no government funding. Its operations are paid for by the cable and satellite affiliates that carry its programming. As chairman and CEO, Lamb has presided over C-SPAN’s expansion to three cable channels, a radio network and Internet streaming. Lamb has become the familiar face of the operation, anchoring coverage of many important events, talking to newsmakers and, beginning as the 15-year host of the program Booknotes, interviewing thousands of authors.
Carol Dudley
During her decades of service at Howard University, Carol Dudley has served as mentor, coach, advisor and enforcer for scores of communications students who have graduated from Howard and gone on to pursue careers in journalism. In the process, Dudley has almost single-handedly taken a small college jobs fair at Howard and turned it into one of the nation’s major career conferences. On the strength of her dedication and persistence, dozens of recruiters converge on the Howard campus each fall to meet hundreds of job seekers — students and early-career professionals — from all across the country.
Dudley’s work has provided employers an opportunity to feed their talent pipeline consistently, and has given students an opportunity to learn face-to-face what employers have to offer and what they are demanding. Dudley's year-after-year success is legendary.
Contact:: Joel Whitaker, Contest Coordinator
240-583-0280