ANNOUNCER: This is Washington Week with Gwen Ifill: A Tribute to a Life Well Lived.
MICHELE NORRIS: I'm Michele Norris.
Gwen Ifill would normally be greeting you on Friday.
It was her favorite day of the week, because Washington Week was her sandbox.
It was the place she invited reporters, like those here tonight, to empty their notebooks
and give viewers smart analysis of the important stories of the week.
Gwen was tough, and
she was funny.
I know, because she was one of my closest friends for three decades.
She enjoyed tremendous success, but her faith, her family, her friends were always a
priority.
And tonight, we celebrate Gwen's life and her legacy.
Gwen Ifill was a
preacher's daughter who at an early age knew that her calling was to become a journalist.
After college, she worked as a print reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun, The
Washington Post and The New York Times.
In the 1990s, she became a TV correspondent for
NBC News and, later, the PBS NewsHour.
She covered seven presidential campaigns - seven.
She moderated two vice presidential debates and a Democratic candidates debate.
Last June, Gwen hosted a PBS town hall with President Obama.
He reflected on her passing and extraordinary career earlier this week.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: (From video.)
She was an extraordinary journalist.
I always appreciated Gwen's reporting, even when I was at the receiving end of one of her
tough and thorough interviews.
MICHELE NORRIS: Gwen was a trailblazer who broke racial and gender barriers.
In 1999, she was named moderator and managing editor of Washington Week, making history
as the first African-American woman to host a national politics program on TV.
Later, she made history again as half of the first all-female anchor team on a nightly
network newscast.
She was a best-selling author.
Gwen's talents earned her numerous awards, including a Peabody, the John Chancellor Award
by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and many, many other honors.
Gwen made her mark on journalism with her unwavering commitment to the pursuit of the
truth and of fairness.
She loved asking the tough questions and figuring out how exactly
to ask that questions.
And she valued thoughtful civic discourse.
So we're going to have a little bit of civic discourse this evening to talk about all
the things that we remember, all the things that made her so wonderful, and all the
reasons why we will miss her so very much.
Rick, I want to begin with you because, of
all of us, you have known her the longest.
You worked together at the Baltimore Sun.
And I want you to tell us a little bit -
RICK BERKE: Gwen would correct me: Baltimore Evening Sun.
MICHELE NORRIS: Oh, the Baltimore Evening Sun.
Let me get that right!
(Laughter.)
RICK BERKE: Gwen was loyal to the end to the Baltimore Evening Sun.
And in those days, there were three scrappy newspapers in Baltimore: the Evening Sun, the
Morning Sun - and we glare at them across the newsroom, at those Morning Sun people - and
the News American.
And Gwen and I were the two City Hall reporters, and City Hall was
the big story then in Baltimore.
And we would just fight to the end, and she would say
never - and in fact, I called the obituary reporter at The Washington Post at 11:00
Monday night and said, for Gwen, change it to Evening Sun.
(Laughter.)
She was always
loyal, just like she was loyal to Washington Week and everywhere else she worked.
DAN BALZ: She moved from the Evening Sun to The Washington Post in the mid-'80s, and I
was on the national staff at the time and she was on the metro staff.
And you remember those days: those two staffs didn't interact very regularly.
And somebody had the bright idea to bring all the political reporters together for a
brown-bag lunch one day.
And I honestly didn't know Gwen well.
I knew her byline, but
I had never really met her.
And there were - I don't know, there must have been 15 or
18 of us around a table down in the bowels of the old Washington Post building.
And people were just sharing thoughts and ideas, and Gwen started to speak.
And it's what everybody has since seen of Gwen, because they see her on TV, but it was
that it was - it was the clarity with which she spoke, it was the authority with which
she spoke, and it was also the personality that just - you know, not because - there was
no screen then, but the personality just popped out.
MICHELE NORRIS: Gwen was someone who had authority and assurance, but we should note
that that is - some of that was in her DNA.
Some of that was innate.
But, Martha, it was also because she did a lot of preparation.
She took her job very, very seriously, and that's important for young people who are
watching this and perhaps want to use her life and her career as a beacon.
It's not all baked in.
A lot of it was because she really -
MARTHA RADDATZ: - worked hard.
Oh, Gwen -
MICHELE NORRIS: - would call people, would go the extra mile in every case.
MARTHA RADDATZ: Gwen never walked into any of her jobs.
She earned it.
She would do
so much preparation.
I would marvel at the desk on Friday nights and think: I thought
I was prepared; she knows everything about everything we're all talking about.
I might have known what I was talking about, but Gwen knew everything.
She never sat down at that desk - she never sat down at the anchor desk without knowing
what she was talking about.
I'll just say, I think we're all sitting here and we're
surrounded by these pictures of Gwen's smile, and I just - we just all have to talk
about that.
I mean, that is - that is - when I was walking into WETA tonight, I think
we all had the same feeling.
We were walking in the door, and there was something
joyful about walking in the door on a Friday night because you'd see that magnificent
smile.
In fact, I can't - when I sat down I couldn't look at it because I didn't want
to get too emotional.
Now I want to embrace it.
I want us to all just look at that
smile and embrace it, because that's what everybody thinks about.
And that's really
what set Gwen apart, too.
She not only worked hard.
She was the most genuine person
in the world.
MICHELE NORRIS: Many of us have been on the campaign trail with Gwen.
You loved to have her on the campaign trail, loved to be on - have her cover the same
candidate and be on that bus because life was so much better when she was there.
KAREN TUMULTY: Exactly, decades of being road warriors together.
But the first campaign where I met Gwen Ifill was the 1988 Jesse Jackson campaign.
Rick was on that one, too.
And even then, you know, 30-year-old Gwen had the same
self-assurance, the same presence that you would recognize today.
She was an old soul in a 30-year-old body.
She always could find something to
laugh about in any situation - not to laugh at, but to laugh about.
MICHELE NORRIS: And sometimes it was sardonic.
(Laughter.)
Often it was.
Sometimes it was at your expense, and that was - that was all right.
DAN BALZ: People may not appreciate sort of how - you know, how weird some of our lives
are out on the campaign trail.
There's an absurdity along with the seriousness of
the story we're covering, and Gwen appreciated both sides of that.
And so she could laugh in these incredible situations where you're - you know, you're
eating chicken five times a day on the Jackson campaign, or stressed out over - you know,
over a particular moment on a program or something like that.
But she always found - she always found something funny as well as the seriousness.
MICHELE NORRIS: I think that helped her where she made transitions, also, because she
was often thrown in the deep end of the pool.
She went to television, and she didn't go through local television, she went straight to
network news and went to - you know, straight to a prestige beat.
PETE WILLIAMS: Yes, and I wanted to say that a friend of ours said this week that Gwen
was good at being happy, and she certainly was.
Well, she came to NBC in 1994, but
she had to be dragged into it.
She was talked into it by Tim Russert, who was then the
Washington Bureau chief for NBC News, the moderator of Meet The Press.
And he kept
bugging her all the time.
He would have her on as a guest, and of course she shined.
He loved that alternative point of view that she had.
And he finally said to her: What are you afraid of?
And later she would say that everybody should have a mentor like Tim Russert.
She said you need someone who will talk you into something that you're scared to do, but
that is the right thing.
And of course, she needn't have been scared.
She flourished at NBC News because she was a great reporter to start with, and that's
really what it's all about.
Now, I've said before that she made the quick adjustment
to television.
She says that's not true, but she did reveal some of her secrets.
She said that she shamelessly flirted with the crews.
(Laughter.)
And as we all know, these people behind the cameras -
KAREN TUMULTY: They totally loved it.
(Laugher.)
PETE WILLIAMS: - really, our career's in their hands.
They can make us look great, or
not - although I think it would be a challenge for any photographer to make Gwen look
anything but great.
But she - everybody loved working with Gwen.
She also tells a story - and I assume it's apocryphal - that she said one of her first
assignments was to go cover something, so she went there with her notebook and came back
and said, OK, and started to write it.
And they said, well, where are the pictures?
And she said - (snaps fingers) - oh yeah, I forgot to bring a camera.
(Laughter.)
But she caught on pretty fast.
MICHELE NORRIS: You know, she also was someone who brought her genuine self to
television.
I mean, there are some who work in television, or even in broadcasting in
general, who flip a switch when they get behind the microphone and turn on that
personality.
What you - what you see here every Friday night was the person that you
saw off-camera, that's right.
PETE WILLIAMS: I'm sure we all have a story like this.
You're on an airplane, you're
in an airport, you're at a bus station, you're in line at the - at the movies, and
someone will always say: What's Gwen Ifill really like?
And the answer was she's just
like what you see on television.
That's Gwen.
Gwen is the same everywhere.
ALEXIS SIMENDINGER: And I think that's - I think that's one of the things that I really
appreciated about her.
She was so comforting and comfortable - comfortable on the air,
comfortable in what she was doing, strong and confident.
And she wanted the people who came here on Friday nights or on the NewsHour, to feel
exactly the same way: be yourself, be comfortable.
And that is not an easy thing to do, I think, in journalism when you're at the level that
Gwen had achieved, right - to portray who you are, to know your stuff, not be a showboat.
I really appreciated that part of her.
As you say, she was so genuine.
KAREN TUMULTY: Once, after a presidential debate, I was walking through a casino and
decided to stop at the craps table and see how it was done, and the pit boss was being
incredibly nice to me and actually giving me little nudges on how to do it.
And I looked
up like, why are you being so nice?
And he looked at me and he said: Gwen Ifill,
Washington Week.
(Laughter.)
So I said, Gwen, you have a following among pit bosses
in Las Vegas now too.
PETE WILLIAMS: Who will help you cheat, apparently.
(Laughter.)
RICK BERKE: And we all know that Gwen liked that people loved her.
She appreciated that.
And every time any of us would go out to dinner with her, she'd say, oh no, they're going
to - they're listening to our conversation.
We better be careful, they're all going to -
she loved it, though.
(Laughter.)
And you know she loved it.
MICHELE NORRIS: And she made time for it.
RICK BERKE: She made time for it.
MICHELE NORRIS: You know, she didn't give anyone the Heisman, like I don't have time for
you, you know.
She actually welcomed that and appreciated it, and knew that it was
special.
So maybe we can pull back the curtain and talk a little bit about how she put
the show together every week.
There was - Martha and I ran afoul of one of her rules in the Green Room.
(Laughter.)
MARTHA RADDATZ: Yes we did!
MICHELE NORRIS: In the Green Room, Susan, you knew - (laughter) - you knew that when you
walked in the Green Room, and even if there was a big story that was still breaking, that
was still - you know, someone was at the podium in the Briefing Room at The White House,
you were not allowed to talk about it, because?
SUSAN DAVIS: Because there is no talking about the show in the Green Room.
She was very superstitious about that.
And I think part of it, too, was I always think
of the Green Room here was - it was fun to be in the Green Room here.
It was a good place to, like, catch up.
Yes, we gossiped sometimes in there.
Gwen would talk about, you know, her life off-camera.
It was - you could see her warmth.
And one of the things I - I mean, I remember the first time I did the show.
I remember what I wore.
I remember how nervous I was.
I remember getting an invitation
to go on the show and be thinking, like, I'm just a kid, you know?
(Laughs.)
What am I
doing at Gwen Ifill's table?
And I remember coming here, and I think she could probably
tell that I was really nervous.
And she was so calming and she was so cool.
And I did the show, and it went well, obviously they had me back on.
And I remember
leaving, and a friend of mine called me and said, what is Gwen Ifill really like?
As Pete said, people always wanted to know, when you knew Gwen, what was she really like?
And I remember just saying, she's awesome.
Like, she was so great.
And she really did - you know, she had very - I didn't have the same level of friendship
of Gwen as you all had; you all knew her much longer.
But she really, I think, made such an effort to reach out to younger journalists, to make
sure they got a seat at her table.
She cared about people who were covering beats and
reporting.
And she cared a lot about younger women.
I mean, it wasn't in her actions, not just her words, but she made it almost unacceptable
to have these kind of conversations and not have a female voice at the table.
MARTHA RADDATZ: She was generous, generous with her time.
SUSAN DAVIS: Yes, "generous" is a great word.
MARTHA RADDATZ: She was generous with her knowledge.
She was generous with her joy.
Gwen was my mentor.
I mean, I looked at Gwen for everything.
When I - when she started
doing Washington Week as the host, that year I started at the network.
And I'd been on television for a long time before, in local news, and was at NPR too, but
Peter Jennings was my anchor and that man could be absolutely terrifying.
(Laughter.)
And when he asked you a question - and you know, he was - he wanted you to be
better, and he was a great journalist, amazing journalist, but he could be terrifying.
So when you ask a - when he asked you a question, you never quite knew what Peter would
ask.
You'd look in the lens and you'd think, Peter.
And I always used to think, when I started at ABC - and Gwen knew this - that I would
think Gwen; that I would look in that news - in that lens, and whatever news I was giving
I thought I was giving it to Gwen because that calmed me down.
Because I knew, number
one, she was listening.
She wanted me to be the best I could possibly be.
PETE WILLIAMS: One of the hallmarks of Gwen was that she rooted for everybody.
You know, there are some people in life, in every calling, and certainly in what we do,
that think to themselves it's not enough that I succeed; you also have to fail.
And Gwen
celebrated everybody's accomplishments.
She was - she was - that kind of generosity
of spirit.
She was very happy when any - one her family members on the show succeeded.
MICHELE NORRIS: Even when she was competing with them.
PETE WILLIAMS: Oh, yes.
MICHELE NORRIS: You know, she's been my best friend for 30 years, and we were often in a
competitive posture.
We were - you know, allegedly, because we were at competing
networks or competing, you know, in the same beat.
And she could compete with the best of them, but then, you know, when you filed your
piece, she was your greatest booster.
DAN BALZ: I want to go back to the point that you made, which is, you know, Gwen was
clearly a barrier-breaker.
I mean, she broke a lot of barriers, and it was not easy.
You know, she fought, she got there.
She got where she got because of enormous
diligence, preparation, determination.
When she got to Washington Week, it was a
bastion of white men.
I mean, it had always been a show of older white men.
And Gwen spent her entire time repopulating the table at Washington Week.
Younger reporters.
More women.
People of color.
And it was not done in a kind of
flamboyant way.
It was just quietly.
If you look at the progression of Washington Week
during her time as moderator, you see a huge sea change that represents the change in
the reporting corps in Washington, but isn't necessarily always shown on the program.
MICHELE NORRIS: And she's done that everywhere she's worked.
She really is the embodiment of the motto, lifting while you climb.
And we've talked so much about Gwen's professional success, but her personal life was
also a very rich tapestry of friends.
And she talked about - when she was honored as
a history maker we had a chance to actually talk about the importance of friendship.
Let's take a listen.
MICHELE NORRIS: (From video.)
How did the relationship that you had with your siblings,
that sense of family, that cocoon - how did that shape you as a journalist and as the
person you've become?
GWEN IFILL: (From video.)
Well, because my father was an AME minister, we moved every
couple years.
You all who are familiar with the AME itinerancy, every couple years we'd
be transferred.
And so in the end, your best friends growing up were your family, were
the people you knew all the time.
And that was extended - that expanded to our
extended family as well.
So that made you realize the value of family first and foremost.
But it also allowed you to pick very carefully who your friends are and who they're not.
So I'm not confused about friendships, but I'm also very conscious about the number of
people who are my friends because of my job, and those who are my friends no matter what.
MICHELE NORRIS: (From video.)
I gotcha.
(Laughter.)
GWEN IFILL: (From video.)
And that informs my thinking and informs my morality, and it
informs how I gauge - not judge - but gauge the people I cover.
MICHELE NORRIS: (Laughter.)
I'm sorry.
That got to me a little bit.
Friendship was very important to Gwen.
She nourished her friendships.
We've said - we've talked about how she wasn't competitive with her friends.
And she had this quality that I really appreciate of admitting what she did not know.
KAREN TUMULTY: On the personal side, Gwen was such a collector of people.
And every New Year's Day she would give this party.
And this is where all of her
friends would gather to eat their black-eyed peas for good luck.
MICHELE NORRIS: And their collard greens so you'd have some money in the coming year.
KAREN TUMULTY: Money too, yes.
(Laughter.)
And every year this party would get bigger
and bigger and bigger.
And everybody would be in Gwen's house, you know, jammed in
there where you could barely move it was so crowded.
PETE WILLIAMS: We had to come in shifts.
KAREN TUMULTY: Yes.
(Laughter.)
But-
DAN BALZ: Well, it went on all day.
MICHELE NORRIS: And into the night, actually, in many cases.
DAN BALZ: Into the night, right.
KAREN TUMULTY: But at this wonderful New Year's Day gathering, which she always says was
her excuse not to go out on New Year's Eve, you could see every facet of Gwen's life.
It was such a wonderful, diverse, happy crowd.
And I cannot even imagine New Year's Day.
DAN BALZ: I think there's something also about that day.
If you think about the world in which Gwen moved, this could have been a party in which
you had politicians and Cabinet officials and all sorts of powerful, powerful people.
PETE WILLIAMS: Bigshots, yeah.
DAN BALZ: Bigshots.
That wasn't the party.
It was her friends.
It was just, you know, a lot of reporters a lot of her family, yes.
MICHELE NORRIS: Her hairdresser, the folks from church.
MARTHA RADDATZ: Gathered all around the house and outside.
DAN BALZ: Right, the extended family.
But it wasn't a place to show how powerful - how the powerful would come and greet her.
MARTHA RADDATZ: I love her ability to listen.
It's really hard when you're on
television to listen to what's going on around that table.
But I always got the sense
that - and I'm sure we all did - whenever you're talking, she was listening.
She was
learning.
She was absorbing.
I mean, as I said, she always came to that table prepared.
But I think she always took something away for next time.
I love the conversations about diversity and what she did to change that table.
That's a gift to all the viewers.
That is a gift that she gave everyone.
PETE WILLIAMS: Another gift, I think, that she brought is the calmness on Washington
Week because, lord knows, you can turn the dial on your television or your radio these
days and hear a lot of people yell at you about what you ought to think.
And I - in the comments that I've seen this week about Gwen, that's what they say - many
people say that they will miss as much as anything, is the - is the dignity and the
calmness and the respect - she had great respect for politics and politicians and people
who cover politics.
She had a reporter's skepticism, but ultimately a respect.
And I think people are going to miss that a great deal.
MARTHA RADDATZ: Respect and trust.
MICHELE NORRIS: We should mention the road shows because, you know, when she went out on
the road it was a chance for her to really commune with her audience.
And you saw in a very personal way how much people really loved her work, respected her
work, and felt that she was theirs.
ALEXIS SIMENDINGER: This is a year in which the media have really taken it on the chin,
right, in this election cycle.
And you could never say about Washington Week or Gwen
that she was not trying to take her show to where the voters, the electorate lived,
where they cared about their communities, what was worrying them.
And she was such - as Martha was saying - such a good listener, and also - maybe, you
know, from moving around as a younger person - she was so flexible and adaptive.
Wherever she went, she could talk to anyone, any walk of life, and have fun doing it.
SUSAN DAVIS: I'm not sure I've ever personally met a journalist who so deeply connected
with their audience.
And you talked about meeting people that knew Gwen, or viewers
that just felt like she was part of their family.
She used to say people would send them jewelry that they made and art that they did.
And, Dan, if you remember, we did the road show in Cleveland right before the Republican
National Convention this year.
And there was a lot of technical glitches and we had a
whole live audience, and Gwen was just rolling with it.
But she clearly was not feeling
great.
And how many of the people in the audience and the women in the audience were
trying to get fans for her and tissues.
And you could just feel the viewers were like,
oh, we have to take care of Gwen.
And that connection that she had with the people that
watched the show always seemed so pure and kind.
And I feel like that's why so many
people that watched the show also just feel like they've lost a friend, because Gwen
just projected friendship and fellowship, particularly at the table.
DAN BALZ: I was in Austin the day after she died, at a conference.
And any number of people came up to me who were viewers.
They had never met Gwen.
But they knew that I was a person on the show.
And first they came up and offered
condolences.
But they were also talking about their own sense of loss.
I mean, she - you know, she was on a TV screen, but she came through that TV screen to
people and created this bond that you talked about, that you could see on the road shows,
but you can see it everywhere.
And all of us have stories about someone stopping us
on the street or at a hotel or at a Starbucks and saying, I love Washington Week.
I love Gwen.
Please say hello to Gwen.
I mean, they had a personal connection with
her, unlike anything I've ever seen in terms of somebody who's in the media.
MICHELE NORRIS: Many of the viewers were all the more surprised by her passing because
they did not know that she was sick.
Most of you knew.
And you knew that she was
making her way here on Fridays, anchoring NewsHour, doing road shows, doing a town
hall with President Obama, while she was also struggling, while she was also in pain
in some cases.
And it says so much about her work ethic and it says so much about
her commitment to the viewers.
You know, she wanted to be here because she knew this
election was important.
She wanted to be here for all of you.
And there's a lesson in that also.
RICK BERKE: One thing that always struck me is, whenever we would go out and talk about
the latest gossip or problems at work or in life or on the campaign, she'd always end it
in saying, you know, life is good.
She really appreciated what she had.
She never lost sight of it.
And she always would say, life is good.
MICHELE NORRIS: Paula Kerger, the president and CEO of PBS, summed up Gwen's storied
career best.
She said, "Gwen was one of America's leading lights in journalism and a
fundamental reason public media is considered a trusted window on the world by
audiences across the nation."
Gwen's commitment to journalism, and especially her
devotion to mentoring young reporters, will continue for many years to come.
The Gwen Ifill Fund for Journalism Excellence has been established.
And you can find more information on the Washington Week website.
And we do hope you go there to find more information.
We have only scratched the
surface of stories about our friend Gwen Ifill.
We could - we could go on all night.
We could probably go on into the weekend.
But we'll share more on the Washington Week
Extra.
And you can find that and more remembrances about Gwen's remarkable career on
the Washington Week website, and at PBS.org/WashingtonWeek.
We now raise a glass -
we now raise a glass to toast our friend, our mentor, our colleague, our shero -
(laughter) - amazing life, amazing career, amazing woman, Gwen Ifill.
ALL: Here, here.
ALEXIS SIMENDINGER: Cheers.
MICHELE NORRIS: Good night.
(Music.)
