Office of Public Information and Communications Columbia University New York, N.Y. 10027 (212) 854-5573
Nightline anchor Ted Koppel will host the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards in television and radio journalism Thursday, January 25, 1996, the University has announced.
Journalists Lesley Stahl, Charlie Rose, Tim Russert, Ralph Begleiter and Daniel Schorr and Columbia University President George Rupp will present the awards - Silver Batons and the Gold Baton - in a ceremony aired nationally by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Joan Konner, dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and chair of the awards jury, will comment on the broadcast year.
The 90-minute broadcast of the 1994-95 awards for excellence in television and radio journalism is the 18th co-production of Thirteen/WNET in New York and the Journalism School. The ceremonies from the Rotunda of Low Memorial Library at Columbia in New York City will air at 10 P.M. (E.T.). (Check local listings.) The awards, established in 1942, have been administered by the Graduate School of Journalism since 1968.
The Alfred I. duPont Forum, an annual conference on vital issues in broadcasting held on the day of the awards, will consider the topic Democracy and the News: Citizens, Journalists and Contemporary Politics.
Mr. Koppel has reported and anchored for ABC News for more than 30 years. Anchor of Nightline since its inception in 1980, he is its principal on-air reporter and interviewer and the program's managing editor. He has received eight duPont-Columbia Awards, including the first Gold Baton, awarded in 1985 for Nightline's week-long series from South Africa.
Ms. Stahl of CBS News is co-editor of 60 Minutes, which she joined in 1991 after covering the White House for CBS during three administrations. Mr. Rose is the Emmy Award-winning host of Charlie Rose, a nightly hour-long interview program seen nationally on PBS affiliates. Mr. Russert is senior vice president, Washington bureau chief and the moderator of Meet the Press for NBC News. Mr. Begleiter is CNN's world affairs correspondent based in Washington and host of Global View, a weekly interview program. Mr. Schorr, a veteran reporter and commentator, interprets national and international events as senior news analyst for National Public Radio.
The 1994-95 awards recognize programs aired between July 1, 1994, and June 30, 1995. The jury considered the best of 540 entries from small-, medium- and major-market television stations, network television, cable, independent productions and radio. All entries were reviewed by a board of screeners, many of them past duPont-Columbia Award winners. A special prize, the Gold Baton, will be awarded for an exceptional contribution to television and radio journalism.
The awards honoring excellence in television and radio journalism were established by the late Jessie Ball duPont in memory of her husband, Alfred I. duPont. Serving on the jury with Dean Konner are Philip S. Balboni, president of New England Cable News; Henry Hampton, president of Blackside, Inc., and executive producer of the television series The Great Depression and Eyes on the Prize I and II; Bernard Kalb, moderator of the weekly CNN program Reliable Sources, which monitors media performance; Eric Mink, television columnist for New York's Daily News, Marlene Sanders, anchor of Prime Life Network, and Sally Bedell Smith, biographer and former cultural affairs reporter.
The duPont-Columbia batons were designed by Louis I. Kahn and are inscribed with this comment about television by legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow: "This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box." (From an address to the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Chicago, October 15, 1958.)
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