Damon Runyon Award

The Damon Runyon Award has been presented annually by the historic Denver Press Club each spring since 1994.

The award is named after Damon Runyon, a legendary journalist who grew up in Colorado, worked at The Denver Post and Pueblo Chieftain, and became a member of the Press Club in 1907.

Runyon later went on to fame and glory in New York City as a columnist for Hearst newspapers. He is best-known for a collection of stories called “Guys and Dolls,” which later turned into a Broadway musical and a movie.

The Runyon Award banquet is the major fundraiser of the historic club, which is the oldest in the nation. Proceeds go toward the club’s historic preservation and five scholarships for $1500 and one — the John C. Ensslin Memorial Scholarship — for $3,000. The scholarships are reserved for college journalists from universities in Colorado.

The 2020 Damon Runyon Award banquet, originally scheduled for April 11, has been rescheduled as a virtual event on Saturday, Sept. 12. Find more details here.

Damon Runyon Award Honorees

Judy Woodruff (2020)

PBS NewsHour anchor and managing editor

Woodruff graudated from Duke University in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. She stared her reporting career in Atlanta in 1970 at the CBS affiliate, then joined NBC in 1975 to work as a general assignment reporter in Atlanta. In 1977, she moved to Washington, D.C., to become an NBC White House correspondent, covering the administrations of Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Woodruff then moved to PBS, working there from 1983-1993 as the chief Washington correspondent for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour while also anchoring “Frontline with Judy Woodruff” from 1984-1990.

In 1993, she jumped to CNN, where she worked for 12 years, anchoring the program “Inside Politics.” She returned to the NewsHour in 2007. In 2013, she and the late Gwen Ifill were named the first two women to co-anchor a national broadcast before Ifill’s death in 2016.