February 1, 2002

Contact: Todd Cohen, University Relations, (785) 864-8858.

ABC News correspondent Cokie Roberts to receive William Allen White award

Editor's note: A photo of Roberts is available via email from University Relations.

LAWRENCE -- Award-winning congressional correspondent Cokie Roberts will accept the William Allen White Foundation's national citation Feb. 6 at the University of Kansas.

Roberts, who has been a chief congressional analyst for ABC News since 1998 and a news analyst for National Public Radio, will attend a foundation luncheon and then give the annual William Allen White Day public address at 1:30 p.m. in Woodruff Auditorium at the Kansas Union.

A panel of White Foundation trustees chose Roberts to receive the citation, presented annually since 1950 to journalists who exemplify the ideals of William Allen White (1868-1944), a nationally influential Kansas editor and publisher. KU's William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications is named in White's honor.

During her visit, Roberts, A 1964 graduate in political science from Wellesley College, will meet with students and faculty in the KU journalism school.

Roberts covers politics, Congress and public policy for World News Tonight and other ABC news broadcasts. In addition, she is the co-anchor, with Sam Donaldson, of the ABC broadcast, This Week with Sam Donaldson & Cokie Roberts.

She also serves as a news analyst for National Public Radio, where she was the Congressional correspondent for more than ten years. In that time, she won numerous awards, including the highest honor in public radio, the Edward R. Murrow Award. She was also the first broadcast journalist to win the highly prestigious Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for coverage of Congress. In 1991, she was awarded an Emmy for her contribution to the ABCNEWS Special, "Who is Ross Perot?"

Along with her husband, Steven V. Roberts, a professor at George Washington University, she writes a weekly column syndicated by United Media in major newspapers around the country. Her Op-Ed columns have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post; she has also written for The New York Times Magazine and The Atlantic.

The most recent winners of the William Allen White Citation were James K. Batten, 1990; Charlayne Hunter-Gault, 1991; Louis D. Boccardi, 1992; George F. Will, 1993; Bernard Shaw, 1994; Ellen Goodman, 1995; Hedrick Smith, 1996, David Broder, 1997; Bill Kurtis, 1998; Albert Hunt, 1999; Bob Woodward, 2000; and Molly Ivins in 2001.

Other winners have included James Reston, 1950; Walter Cronkite, 1969; James J. Kilpatrick, 1979; Helen Thomas, 1986; and Charles Kuralt, 1989.

For more information about the William Allen White Foundation, call Dana Leibengood at (785) 864-4755.