Judy Woodruff - Career

Career

She began her journalism career at local CBS affiliate WAGA-TV, in Atlanta, Georgia, where she served as a news anchor from 1970 to 1975.

Woodruff joined NBC News in 1975 and was originally based in Atlanta, where she covered the 1976 U.S. presidential campaign of then-Georgia governor Jimmy Carter.

She served as the chief White House correspondent for NBC News from 1977 to 1982, and covered Washington, for NBC's The Today Show from 1982 to 1983.

In 1983 Woodruff moved to PBS, where for 10 years she was chief Washington correspondent for The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. From 1984 to 1990, she was also the host of the PBS documentary series Frontline With Judy Woodruff.

In 1993 she joined CNN, where for 12 years she was the host of Inside Politics, the nation's first program devoted exclusively to politics. Woodruff stayed with CNN until 2005 when she decided not to renew her contract, looking toward teaching, writing, and working on documentaries. CNN founder Ted Turner stated in a May 7, 2009, interview on The Diane Rehm Show that he was upset that CNN had let Woodruff go.

In August 2005, Woodruff was named a visiting fellow for the fall semester at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. She had previously taught the course Media and Politics at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy.

In 2006 she returned to PBS to work on Generation Next, a documentary about American young people and their characteristics, values, and thoughts on family, faith, politics, and world events, produced in conjunction with MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. Generation Next partnered with USA Today, Yahoo! News, and NPR. Additionally in 2006, Woodruff contributed as a guest correspondent to the National Public Radio (NPR) Morning Edition week-long series "]s in America," as part of NPR's fifth-year observance of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

On February 5, 2007, Woodruff returned to PBS on The News Hour With Jim Lehrer full time as senior correspondent, editor of 2008 political coverage, and substitute anchor. As of early 2007, she was also working on Part 2 of the Generation Next documentary for PBS.

Since 2006 she has also anchored a weekly program, Conversations With Judy Woodruff, for Bloomberg Television. Streaming video podcasts of her monthly interviews are available at Bloomberg.com.

Woodruff was selected to present the 2007 Red Smith Lecture in Journalism at the University of Notre Dame. The Red Smith lectureship annually selects renowned journalists to speak at the university to foster good writing and honor high journalistic standards.