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.
Bob Woodward
2019
Reporter and editor at The Washington Post
Marty Baron
2018
Executive Editor of the Washington Post
David Simon
2017
Creator of HBO's The Wire.
Jill Abramson
2016
Former editor of The New York Times
Norm Clarke
2015
Longtime Rocky Mountain News and Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist
Katie Couric
2014
Former CBS News Anchor
Mike Lupica
2013
New York Daily News Columnist
Anna Quindlen
2012
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist
P.J. O'Rourke
2011
Journalist and political satirist
Rick Reilly
2010
Sportswriter
Tim Russert
2008
Former Meet the Press anchor on NBC.
Bob Costas
2007
NBC Sports and Olympics anchor
George Will
2006
Columnist for The Washington Post
Seymour Hersh
2005
Journalist for The New Yorker and the London Review of Books
Carl Hiaasen
2004
Columnist for the Miami Herald and Tribune Content Agency.
Ed Bradley
2003
Correspondent for CBS's 60 Minutes.
David Halberstam
2002
Tom Brokaw
2001
Former NBC Nightly News Anchor
Maureen Dowd
2000
Columnist for The New York Times
Ted Turner
1999
Founder of CNN
Pete Hamill
1998
Former columnist and editor of the New York Daily News and the New York Post
Herb Caen
1997
Molly Ivins
1996
Mike Royko
1995
Jimmy Breslin
1994