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Seymour M. Hersh, an internationally acclaimed journalist, will be honored as the recipient of the William Allen White Foundation’s 2008 national citation during a free, public ceremony at 1:30 p.m., Friday, Feb. 8, 2008, in Woodruff Auditorium of the Kansas Union.
Hersh first wrote for The New Yorker in 1971 and has been a regular contributor to the magazine since 1993. His journalism and publishing awards include the Pulitzer Prize, five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more than a dozen other prizes for investigative reporting.
In 2004, Hersh exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in a series of pieces in the magazine. Early in 2005, he received the National Magazine Award for Public Interest, an Overseas Press Club award, the National Press Foundation’s W. M. Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism award, and his fifth George W. Polk award, making him that award’s most honored laureate.
“Mr. Hersh is a legend in the field of journalism,” said Ann Brill, dean of the School of Journalism. ”Presenting him with the William Allen White citation is a true honor for the School of Journalism and the University of Kansas. His relentless pursuit of the truth is at the heart of investigative reporting and his work reminds us all of the critical importance of journalism.”
Hersh was born in Chicago, in 1937, and graduated in 1958 from the University of Chicago. He began his newspaper career as a police reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago. After serving in the Army, Hersh worked for a suburban newspaper and then for UPI and AP until 1967, when he joined the Presidential campaign of Eugene J. McCarthy as speechwriter and press secretary.
In 1969, he exposed the My Lai massacre and cover up during the Vietnam War. His work earned him the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Hersh joined The New York Times in 1972, working in Washington and New York. He left the paper in 1979 and has been a freelance writer since, with two six-month stints on special assignment to the Times’s Washington bureau.
Hersh has published eight books, most recently, “Chain of Command,” which was based on his reporting for The New Yorker on Abu Ghraib. His book prizes include the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times award for biography, and a second Sidney Hillman award for “The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House.” Hersh also has won two Investigative Reporters & Editors prizes, one for “The Price of Power,” in 1983, and the other for “The Samson Option,” a study of American foreign policy and the Israeli nuclear bomb program, in 1992. In 2004, Hersh won a National Magazine Award for public interest for his pieces “Lunch with the Chairman,” “Selective Intelligence,” and “The Stovepipe.”
Hersh is married, with three children, and lives in Washington, D.C.
The White Foundation trustees chose Hersh to receive the citation, presented annually since 1950. KU’s William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications is named in White’s honor. White (1868-1944) was a nationally influential Kansas editor and publisher. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 and posthumously in 1947.
Other notable recipients of the William Allen White Citation have included James Reston, 1950; Walter Cronkite, 1969; Arthur O. Sulzberger, 1974; James J. Kilpatrick, 1979; Helen Thomas, 1986; Charles Kuralt, 1989; Bernard Shaw, 1994; Bob Woodward, 2000; Molly Ivins, 2001; Cokie Roberts, 2002; Gerald F. Seib, 2005; and Gordon Parks, 2006. A full listing of past recipients is available here.
For more information, contact Jennifer Kinnard, Communications Coordinator for the University of Kansas William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications, at (785) 864-7644 or jkinnard@ku.edu.
*Biography information and photo courtesy of The New Yorker.
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