Gwen Ifill (1955-2016) was one of the most iconic news anchors of her generation despite being a Black woman in a field dominated by white men.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan. And this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Our journalist of the day was one of the most iconic news anchors of her generation despite being a Black woman in a field dominated by white men. Let’s talk about Gwen Ifill.
Gwendolyn Ifill was born in Queens on September 29, 1955. She was the fifth of six children. Her father was an immigrant from Panama and a pastor at an Episcopal church. Her mother was from Barbados.
Gwen grew up in several cities across the Northeast because her father was reassigned frequently for work. The family often lived in parsonages or federal housing. After Gwen later became a successful journalist, she commented that she was likely the only Washington journalist on the housing beat who had ever actually lived in subsidized housing.
The Ifill family was almost as devoted to the nightly news as they were to church. They watched evening broadcasts together and discussed the latest happenings -- from civil rights developments to the Vietnam War. Gwen knew she wanted to be a journalist from the age of 9.
She later said, “I was very conscious of the world being this very crazed place that demanded explanation.”
Gwen graduated high school in Springfield, Massachusetts. She went on to major in Communications at Simmons College in Boston, and graduated in 1977. After school, she set out to make her mark on the journalism world.
Gwen interned at the Boston Herald-American before writing there full time. She started out on the food beat. She then moved on to covering education post segregation. In 1981, she wrote for The Baltimore Evening Sun, where she covered local politicians. At the Boston Herald-American and the Baltimore Evening Sun, Gwen received letters from angry, racist readers filled with slurs. The white men in leadership positions at the papers didn’t do anything about it.
Gwen went on to work at The Washington Post in 1984, covering politics. Four years in, she took on her first presidential campaign. She became a regular panelist on DC TV shows. That said, she was wary of appearing on TV too often at first because she feared hurting her reputation as a ‘serious’ reporter.
In 1991 after Bill Clinton’s successful presidential campaign,Gwen started working for the New York Times as a White House correspondent. Soon thereafter, Gwen was flooded with job offers from all three major broadcast news outlets. She resisted the transition at first, but the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Tim Russert, finally convinced her to make the switch to TV.
“What are you afraid of?” He asked.
So, in 1994, NBC successfully recruited Gwen to cover Capitol Hill. She continued her diligent reporting on now-President Clinton, through alleged financial scandals and his later impeachment. She made regular appearances on Meet the Press, which helped to build her public reputation.
In 1999, Gwen moved to PBS. Though public television had a smaller audience, she was able to devote more time to the important issues. With her appointment to “Washington Week in Review,” she became the first Black woman to lead a major national political show.
Gwen also became the co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS’s “NewsHour,” alongside Judy Woodruff. When the two were officially named co-anchors in 2013, they were the first all-female anchor team on network nightly news. Judy described Gwen as a “fiend about facts.”
Judy said that Gwen had, “the rare combination of authority and warmth. She came through the screen as a friend to people who watched her, but she also displayed the authority for people to believe you, to have credibility.”
In 2004, Gwen moderated a vice presidential debate between the incumbent Dick Cheney and Senator John Edwards. She gained praise for her no-nonsense style of moderation, and for bringing up a tough question about the AIDS epidemic in America. She asked how the government should address Black women’s disproportionate death rate to the disease and end the growth of the epidemic. Neither of the candidates were prepared to answer.
For years, Gwen received messages thanking her for asking that question -- and even got stopped in public to receive praise from grateful viewers.
Gwen also moderated the 2008 VP debate between Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Joe Biden. Though Governor Palin questioned Gwen’s objectivity, as she was writing a book about Barack Obama at the time, other Republicans jumped to her defense. She had more than proven herself objective.
Gwen later explained that her job as a reporter, “is not to know what I think.”
On President Obama’s inauguration day the following year, Gwen published her book, “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.”
In 2016, Gwen and Judy co-moderated the Democratic primary debate between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders.
That same year, Gwen took a month-long leave from PBS due to an undisclosed medical problem. After a short period back at work, she went on leave again, missing election night coverage. She passed away from uterine cancer on November 14, 2016. She was 61 years old.
Gwen earned many awards for her reporting over the years. In 2008, she got the George Foster Peabody Award for her campaign coverage. In 2012, she was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame. In 2015, she earned the Fourth Estate Award from the National Press Club.
The week Gwen passed away, she was scheduled to receive the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism from Columbia University.
At the peak of her career, Gwen reflected on the impact of her trailblazing.
She said, “I’m very keen about the fact that a little girl now, watching the news, when they see me and Judy sitting side by side, it will occur to them that that’s perfectly normal — that it won’t seem like any big breakthrough at all.”
All month, we’re talking about journalists.
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Talk to you tomorrow!