FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan. 19, 2018
DENVER — Pulitzer Prize-winning editor Marty Baron has been named the recipient of the Denver Press Club’s 24th annual Damon Runyon Award.
Baron, editor of The Washington Post, will be honored by the club on Friday, April 27, 2018, during a banquet at the Denver Athletic Club.
Baron is known for his role as editor of The Boston Globe, where he oversaw an investigation into clergy sex abuse.
That series of stories earned the Globe the 2003 Pulitzer for Public Service and inspired the 2015 movie “Spotlight,” which won an Oscar for Best Picture.
He now is leading the Post during a period of unprecedented growth on the digital front, with the paper winning Pulitzers for national reporting two years in a row.
“Great journalism shines a light on people who would otherwise not have their stories told — and it can lead to great impact as we saw with the work of Marty Baron and his teams at The Boston Globe and now The Washington Post,” said David Milstead, president of the Denver Press Club.
Baron joins the list of previous Runyon winners that comprise an honor roll of American journalism.
They are 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 and David Simon.
The award is named after Damon Runyon, a legendary journalist who grew up in Colorado, worked at The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, and became a member of the DPC 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 was turned into a Broadway musical and a movie.
The Denver Press Club recently celebrated its 150th anniversary during a year in which its downtown clubhouse was added to the National Registry of Historic Places.
The Runyon Award banquet is the club’s major fundraiser. Proceeds go toward the club’s historic preservation and scholarships for six college journalists from universities in Colorado.
Tickets are available at bit.ly/2018Runyon. For more information, call Bruce Goldberg at 303-369-4088.
