Society of Professional Journalists — Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter
For immediate release
CBS News Senior White House correspondent Bill Plante, longtime New Yorker magazine Washington reporter Elizabeth Drew and Washington Post columnist Jonetta Rose Barras will be inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists on Tuesday, June 14.
The criterion for membership in the Hall of Fame is simply this: strong journalism for at least 25 years in Washington.
The three inductees will speak at the chapter’s annual Dateline Awards and Hall of Fame Dinner in the ballroom of the National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW in Washington. Cocktails begin at 6 p.m., with dinner at 7 p.m.
That evening, the chapter’s 2016 Distinguished Service Award will be presented to Charles Lewis, founder of the Center for Public Integrity and several other journalism organizations. Lewis also will speak.
Plante joined CBS News in 1964 and soon was reporting on the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement in Mississippi and Alabama. In 1968, he first covered a presidential campaign and has done so during every subsequent election. He was in the White House press corps during the Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama presidencies. He was CBS State Department correspondent during the administration of President George H.W. Bush.
Drew, a Washington-based contributor to The New York Review of Books, is the author of 14 books, most of them about contemporary politics. In 1973, Drew picked up coverage of the Watergate story for The New Yorker and continued writing that magazine’s Letter from Washington for nearly two decades. She also was Washington correspondent for The Atlantic, and has appeared on numerous television and radio programs.
As Washington City Paper’s “Best of D.C.” website puts it, Barras “has been exposing the wasteful and hypocritical ways of local politicians in this town since 1982.” Barras writes or has written for the Washington Post, the Washington City Paper, the Washington Times, the Washington Examiner and the Washington Afro-American. She has been a host of “D.C. Politics” on WPFW-FM and is a former host of WAMU’s “Politics Hour.” Washingtonian magazine listed her as one of the city’s 50 most influential journalists.
Lewis is a professor at American University’s School of Communication as well as executive editor of AU’s Investigative Reporting Workshop. Formerly an investigative producer for ABC News and for CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Lewis founded the Center for Public Integrity, in 1989, and its International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, in 1997. He also co-founded the Institute for Nonprofit News (formerly the Investigative News Network), a consortium of more than 100 news organizations around the country dedicated to collaborative efforts in public service journalism.
Also at the June 14 dinner, the SPJ D.C. Pro Chapter will announce the winners of its annual Dateline Awards for excellence in local journalism.
Tickets for the dinner are now available for $85 each for verified D.C. Pro Chapter members, and $115 each for non-chapter members. D.C. Pro chapter members also may buy a second ticket at the $85 rate. Buy tickets here: http://tinyurl.com/hyrzrel .
Contact dinner co-chair Dan Kubiske at spjdcchapter@gmail.com, dan@kubiske.org or 703-678-6833 if you have questions or to make reservations.
News contact: Steve Taylor at juxta747@gmail.com or 571-355-2536.
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