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.

This year’s Damon Runyon Award ceremony will be April 14, 2023. Find more details here.

Damon Runyon Award Honorees

Steve Lopez

Steve Lopez, an award-winning Los Angeles Times columnist whose story of a mentally ill homeless musician inspired the movie “The Soloist,” is the 29th winner of the Denver Press Club’s Damon Runyon Award.

Lopez will be honored at the club’s Damon Runyon dinner on April 16 at the Hilton Garden Inn, 1400 Welton St., in Denver. Tickets are on sale.

Lopez is a California native who has been a Times columnist since 2001, focusing on important community and societal issues – elder care, income inequality, housing and homelessness. He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary – in 2012, 2016, 2018, and 2020. In 2020, the Pulitzer Board lauded his “purposeful columns about rising homelessness in Los Angeles, which amplified calls for government action to deal with a long- visible public crisis.”

His columns cut deep – like one June 1, 2019, that began with a vivid description of current realities underscored with disbelief that they were unfolding in modern-day Los Angeles:

The good news is that two trash-strewn downtown Los Angeles streets I wrote about last week were cleaned up by city work crews and have been kept that way, as of this writing. The bad news is that I didn’t have to travel far to find more streets just as badly fouled by filthy mounds of junk and stinking, rotting food.

Then there was the news that the LAPD station on skid row was cited by the state for a rodent infestation and other unsanitary conditions, and that one employee there was infected with the strain of bacteria that causes typhoid fever.

What century is this?

“The Doctor Is In,” Lopez’s story about how easy it was to legally obtain medical marijuana in Southern California, was among a series of reports on television station KCET’s SoCal Connected show that was honored with the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in 2011. The duPont is among the most prestigious honors in broadcast journalism.

In addition, Lopez is also the author of three novels and two collections of his columns. His book, “The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music,” was a New York Times and Los Angeles Times best-seller and winner of the PEN USA Literary Award for Non-Fiction. The book was based on Lopez’s friendship with Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless musician living on Skid Row. Ayers had been a promising violinist but had left the Juilliard School as he struggled with mental illness. Lopez’s columns about Ayers led readers to send instruments to Lopez for Ayers. That friendship also eventually helped Ayers get help for his schizophrenia and get off the streets.

The book was inspired the DreamWorks movie “The Soloist,” starring Jamie Foxx as Ayers and Robert Downey Jr. as Lopez.

The Runyon is the Denver Press Club’s highest honor, and Lopez joins a list of previous winners that reads like an honor roll of American journalism: Jimmy Breslin, Mike Royko, Molly Ivins, Herb Caen, Pete Hamill, Ted Turner, Maureen Dowd, Tom Brokaw, David Halberstam, Ed Bradley, Carl Hiaasen, Seymour Hersh, George Will, Bob Costas, Tim Russert, Rick Reilly, P.J. O’Rourke, Anna Quindlen, Frank Deford, Mike Lupica, Katie Couric, Norm Clarke, Jill Abramson, David Simon, Marty Baron, Bob Woodward, Judy Woodruff and – in 2022 – Eugene Robinson.

Eugene Robinson

Eugene Robinson

2022

Associate Editor and Columnist for The Washington Post
and Commentator for MSNBC

Judy Woodruff

Judy Woodruff

2020

Managing Editor and Anchor for PBS NewsHour

Bob Woodward

Bob Woodward

2019

Reporter and Editor at The Washington Post

Marty Baron

Marty Baron

2018

Executive Editor of the Washington Post

David Simon

David Simon

2017

Creator of HBO's The Wire.

Jill Abramson

Jill Abramson

2016

Former editor of The New York Times

Norm Clarke

Norm Clarke

2015

Longtime Rocky Mountain News and Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist

Katie Couric

Katie Couric

2014

Former CBS News Anchor

Mike Lupica

Mike Lupica

2013

New York Daily News Columnist

Frank Deford

Frank Deford

2012

Sportswriter / NPR Sports Commentator

Anna Quindlen

Anna Quindlen

2011

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist

P.J. O'Rourke

P.J. O'Rourke

2010

Journalist and political satirist

Rick Reilly

Rick Reilly

2009

Sportswriter

Tim Russert

Tim Russert

2008

Former Meet the Press anchor on NBC.

Bob Costas

Bob Costas

2007

NBC Sports and Olympics anchor

George Will

George Will

2006

Columnist for The Washington Post

Seymour Hersh

Seymour Hersh

2005

Journalist for The New Yorker and the London Review of Books

Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen

2004

Columnist for the Miami Herald and Tribune Content Agency.

Ed Bradley

Ed Bradley

2003

Correspondent for CBS's 60 Minutes.

David Halberstam

David Halberstam

2002
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and historian

Tom Brokaw

Tom Brokaw

2001

Former NBC Nightly News Anchor

Maureen Dowd

Maureen Dowd

2000

Columnist for The New York Times

Ted Turner

Ted Turner

1999

Founder of CNN

Pete Hamill

Pete Hamill

1998

Former columnist and editor of the New York Daily News and the New York Post

Herb Caen

Herb Caen

1996
Humorist and journalist

Molly Ivins

Molly Ivins

1996
Columnist and author

Mike Royko

Mike Royko

1995
Pulitzer Prize winning columnist

Jimmy Breslin

Jimmy Breslin

1994
Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and author