Hall of Fame Judy Woodruff PBS Photograph by Lauren Bulbin. Judy Woodruff has been a fixture of American television sets since the early 1980s–first as a White House correspondent for NBC News, then as PBS News Hour’s chief Washington correspondent (later a Frontline presenter), and eventu ally as anchor of CNN’s Inside Politics. Though she stepped away from anchoring in 2022 after more than a decade back at the News Hour, she continues to report for PBS. Her latest project: examining political divisions in the US for the News Hour series “America at a Crossroads” as the nation approaches its 250th birthday. Where she grew up: All over—her dad was an Army officer—but she was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Why she became a journalist: While interning for Georgia representative Robert Grier Stephens Jr. in college, “I consulted with a number of the other women who were working on Capitol Hill and they said to me, ‘If you come back to Washington, you’re going to be the coffee girl.’ It shattered my plan. I ended up thinking, ‘Maybe I’ll have a better shot at a view of politics as a reporter.’ ” First newsroom gig: “The ABC affiliate in Atlanta hired me to be the newsroom secretary. I was the coffee girl—the thing I was trying to avoid. When I would pester the news director to let me go out with the reporters, his answer was ‘I don’t know why you’d want to do that, Judy. We already have a woman reporter.’ I hung in there. A year and a half later, I was hired as a reporter at the [Atlanta] CBS station.” Most memorable interview: “I’ve interviewed all the Presidents from Ford through Biden. But over time, the interviews that have meant the most to me have been with ordinary people. I have loved the chances I’ve had to travel around the country, sit next to somebody, and talk to them about what’s on their mind.” On the importance of public media: “I am overflowing with gratitude that public broadcasting has given me the chance to do meaningful journalism all these years. It isn’t answering every minute to the size of the audience or the age breakdown of the audience. Yes, we want as many people to watch the News Hour as possible, but we don’t have to worry so much about what people are fascinated by at that moment. We’re about light and not so much about heat.”   Broadcast Journalism Shannon Bream Fox Photograph by Magdalena Papaioannou. Over the past 20 years, Shannon Bream has covered every election cycle and Supreme Court decision, as well as major events including Donald Trump’s attempted assassination and Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 race. She now is anchor of Fox News Sunday, the network’s chief legal correspondent, and host of the podcast Livin’ the Bream. A former winner of both Miss Virginia and Miss Florida, Bream previously reported at local stations in Tampa, Charlotte, and DC. Where she grew up: Outside Fort Lauderdale before moving to Florida’s panhandle. How she got into journalism: “I’ve always had this news-junkie thing going on. I thought about going into journalism in college, but my dad wanted me to think about law or med school. I decided to go to law school but never got over the news-junkie thing. While I did practice [law] for a few years, I always felt this pull towards investigating. I did an internship at ABC28, the local [Tampa] TV station, when I was about 29 and got dubbed ‘grandma intern’ because everybody else was 20. I fell in love with the newsroom, and I went to my law firm and said, ‘I love you guys, but this is not my passion.’ I told my boss at the station I was leaving my firm, and he said, ‘No one’s offered you a job here,’ which he was right about. But within weeks, there was an overnight position where I answered phones and made coffee. Then I started writing scripts for the morning show and working the teleprompter. I took on each new task as they let me try it. Eventually, the boss said, ‘Hey, once in a while, if all of our reporters are tied up and we get some breaking news, we may send you out.’ ” On her experience in beauty pageants: “For me, it was fantastic and forced me out of my comfort zone. There’s a lot of public speaking and meeting with groups. One day I would be in a cow-milking contest, and the next I’m meeting the governor.” On interviewing sources with different beliefs: “One of my favorite examples is Professor [Robert] George at Princeton. He does such a good job walking into conversations that are difficult. He and fellow professor Cornel West are good friends, but they believe very different things. They’re able to have these probing debates, then walk off and hug and call each other brother. [Professor George] said to me, ‘You need to walk into every conversation with the possibility you are wrong.’ ” On women journalists she admires: “Marty Tucker, an anchor in Tampa, was one of the first people to meet with me and say, ‘You should try this path, not this path.’ She’d really take the time out of her day to guide someone who had no idea what they were doing. It’s more the people I’ve had a personal contact with, such as Doreen Gentzler, when I worked at NBC4, but I really do have to point to the Diane Sawyers and Barbara Walterses of the world who made it possible I’d be able to do what I’m doing.”   Print Journalism Missy Ryan The Atlantic Photograph by Lauren Bulbin. Missy Ryan’s career reporting on foreign policy and national security has taken her to dozens of countries across Latin America and the Middle East, including Libya, Egypt, Chile, and Mexico. Last year, after a decade covering the Pentagon and State Department at the Washington Post, she joined the Atlantic as a national-security staff writer. Why she enjoys journalism: “I love living overseas and working with other cultures and languages. The idea of joining that with journalism and writing, which is what I love so much, was a dream for me. To go to other places, meet all these cool people, have really interesting conversations, and be able to get paid to do that was kind of unbelievable. I can’t believe this exists as a job.” Memorable early byline: “I had gone to Argentina on fellowship with the Inter American Press Association to work for the Buenos Aires Herald, then started working for Reuters. I wrote a story about Argentina’s universities having funding problems and all these challenges. That got printed in the Washington Post, and I was so excited. As a wire reporter, you don’t always get your stories in the print paper.” A reporting habit she’s learned: “One of the big advantages of being a foreign correspondent is that everything is new to you in that country—the political system, culture, idioms, the way people talk in politics. So you bring a fresh eye to it and notice things that you take for granted in your own country. That’s one of the things that can make foreign correspondents be such effective narrators of what’s happening in a given country. I’ll try to remind myself occasionally, here in the US, to observe political situations, how the military works, or how the government does things, as if I had never grown up around it.” How being a foreign correspondent changed her perception of the US’s role in the world: “Having to report on the repercussions of American foreign policy and military activities overseas makes you take a hard look at the way we do business and what the United States can do, for good or for ill.” On being a woman as a foreign correspondent: “I don’t feel like I face too many barriers, and sometimes [being a woman] is actually an advantage. For example, if you were in Afghanistan as a female reporter, there’s some things you have to do to reflect local customs, but you could [also] interview women in a way that a male reporter wouldn’t be able to.”   Star to Watch Priscilla Alvarez CNN Photograph by Lauren Bulbin. As the daughter of Argentinean immigrants, Priscilla Alvarez has long been fascinated by the subject matter she covers as CNN’s immigration correspondent. Though the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has sparked a particularly turbulent time for her beat, she’s been telling the human stories at the heart of immigration policy since she joined the network in 2019. A Virginia native, she started her career in local news–including an internship at her hometown paper, the now-defunct Leesburg Today. Where she grew up: Leesburg. What it’s like to report on immigration: “It has always been a challenging issue. I’m never not learning. I get to a point where I think I understand something, and then there’s ten more things about it. It’s been very satisfying.” Hardest part of her job: “It is so emotional—there are real people experiencing the policy changes under any given administration. But it’s also so politically charged that both sides struggle to even talk about it. Trying to work in that space is hard.” Work she’s proudest of: “I came [to CNN] from print—I worked at National Journal and then went to the Atlantic and did more politics coverage. Then I came over to network television and got to do immigration [coverage], but I’ve also been able to do the White House and campaigns. Being able to pivot and do different beats is an incredible learning opportunity, and just being willing to jump in-to it has been something I’ve been very proud of.” Most memorable reporting: “During the Biden administration, a surge of unaccompanied children were crossing the border. We were covering every development and breaking a lot of news on the numbers. Under [Trump’s] administration, [I remember] one story in particular of a family that chose early on to self-deport and the Trump administration’s push to have more of that. [What] I’m proud of is telling the stories of people who are affected by policy, but also the accountability of government.” How she stays sane: “I have a Bernese mountain dog named Luna. She is the ultimate stress relief.”   Past Winners 2025 Margaret Brennan CBS News   Elisabeth Bumiller New York Times   Francesca Chambers USA Today   Vivian Salama Wall Street Journal   2024 Carol Leonnig The Washington Post   Meridith McGraw Politico   Rachel Scott ABC   Kara Swisher Vox media   2023 Jacqueline Alemany The Washington Post   Gloria Borger CNN   Asma Khalid NPR   Kelly O’Donnell NBC   2022 Kaitlan Collins CNN   Kathleen Parker THE Washington Post   Martha Raddatz ABC   Ayesha Rascoe NPR   2021 Yamiche Alcindor PBS   Karen Attiah The Washington Post   Susan Glasser The New Yorker   Norah O’Donnell CBS   2020 Molly Ball Time   Rita Braver CBS   Anna Palmer Politico   Kristen Welker NBC   2019 Andrea Mitchell NBC   Ashley Parker The Washington Post   Abby Phillip CNN   Amanda Terkel HuffPost   2018 Amanda Bennett Voice of America   Audie Cornish NPR   Lynn Sweet The Chicago Sun-Times   Amy Walter Cook Political Report   2017 Mary Katharine Ham CNN   Mary Louise Kelly NPR   Jane Mayer The New Yorker   Cokie Roberts NPR/ABC/PBS   2016 Dana Bash CNN   Kathryn Lopez National Review   Susan Page USA Today   Carolyn Ryan The New York Times Hall of Fame Judy Woodruff PBS Photograph by Lauren Bulbin. Judy Woodruff has been a fixture of American television sets since the early 1980s–first as a White House correspondent for NBC News, then as PBS News Hour’s chief Washington correspondent (later a Frontline presenter), and eventually as anchor of CNN’s Inside Politics. Though she stepped away from anchoring in 2022 after more than a decade back at the News Hour, she continues to report for PBS. Her latest project: examining political divisions in the US for the News Hour series “America at a Crossroads” as the nation approaches its 250th birthday. Where she grew up: All over—her dad was an Army officer—but she was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Why she became a journalist: While interning for Georgia representative Robert Grier Stephens Jr. in college, “I consulted with a number of the other women who were working on Capitol Hill and they said to me, ‘If you come back to Washington, you’re going to be the coffee girl.’ It shattered my plan. I ended up thinking, ‘Maybe I’ll have a better shot at a view of politics as a reporter.’ ” First newsroom gig: “The ABC affiliate in Atlanta hired me to be the newsroom secretary. I was the coffee girl—the thing I was trying to avoid. When I would pester the news director to let me go out with the reporters, his answer was ‘I don’t know why you’d want to do that, Judy. We already have a woman reporter.’ I hung in there. A year and a half later, I was hired as a reporter at the [Atlanta] CBS station.” Most memorable interview: “I’ve interviewed all the Presidents from Ford through Biden. But over time, the interviews that have meant the most to me have been with ordinary people. I have loved the chances I’ve had to travel around the country, sit next to somebody, and talk to them about what’s on their mind.” On the importance of public media: “I am overflowing with gratitude that public broadcasting has given me the chance to do meaningful journalism all these years. It isn’t answering every minute to the size of the audience or the age breakdown of the audience. Yes, we want as many people to watch the News Hour as possible, but we don’t have to worry so much about what people are fascinated by at that moment. We’re about light and not so much about heat.”   Broadcast Journalism Shannon Bream Fox Photograph by Magdalena Papaioannou. Over the past 20 years, Shannon Bream has covered every election cycle and Supreme Court decision, as well as major events including Donald Trump’s attempted assassination and Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 race. She now is anchor of Fox News Sunday, the network’s chief legal correspondent, and host of the podcast Livin’ the Bream. A former winner of both Miss Virginia and Miss Florida, Bream previously reported at local stations in Tampa, Charlotte, and DC. Where she grew up: Outside Fort Lauderdale before moving to Florida’s panhandle. How she got into journalism: “I’ve always had this news-junkie thing going on. I thought about going into journalism in college, but my dad wanted me to think about law or med school. I decided to go to law school but never got over the news-junkie thing. While I did practice [law] for a few years, I always felt this pull towards investigating. I did an internship at ABC28, the local [Tampa] TV station, when I was about 29 and got dubbed ‘grandma intern’ because everybody else was 20. I fell in love with the newsroom, and I went to my law firm and said, ‘I love you guys, but this is not my passion.’ I told my boss at the station I was leaving my firm, and he said, ‘No one’s offered you a job here,’ which he was right about. But within weeks, there was an overnight position where I answered phones and made coffee. Then I started writing scripts for the morning show and working the teleprompter. I took on each new task as they let me try it. Eventually, the boss said, ‘Hey, once in a while, if all of our reporters are tied up and we get some breaking news, we may send you out.’ ” On her experience in beauty pageants: “For me, it was fantastic and forced me out of my comfort zone. There’s a lot of public speaking and meeting with groups. One day I would be in a cow-milking contest, and the next I’m meeting the governor.” On interviewing sources with different beliefs: “One of my favorite examples is Professor [Robert] George at Princeton. He does such a good job walking into conversations that are difficult. He and fellow professor Cornel West are good friends, but they believe very different things. They’re able to have these probing debates, then walk off and hug and call each other brother. [Professor George] said to me, ‘You need to walk into every conversation with the possibility you are wrong.’ ” On women journalists she admires: “Marty Tucker, an anchor in Tampa, was one of the first people to meet with me and say, ‘You should try this path, not this path.’ She’d really take the time out of her day to guide someone who had no idea what they were doing. It’s more the people I’ve had a personal contact with, such as Doreen Gentzler, when I worked at NBC4, but I really do have to point to the Diane Sawyers and Barbara Walterses of the world who made it possible I’d be able to do what I’m doing.”   Print Journalism Missy Ryan The Atlantic Photograph by Lauren Bulbin. Missy Ryan’s career reporting on foreign policy and national security has taken her to dozens of countries across Latin America and the Middle East, including Libya, Egypt, Chile, and Mexico. Last year, after a decade covering the Pentagon and State Department at the Washington Post, she joined the Atlantic as a national-security staff writer. Why she enjoys journalism: “I love living overseas and working with other cultures and languages. The idea of joining that with journalism and writing, which is what I love so much, was a dream for me. To go to other places, meet all these cool people, have really interesting conversations, and be able to get paid to do that was kind of unbelievable. I can’t believe this exists as a job.” Memorable early byline: “I had gone to Argentina on fellowship with the Inter American Press Association to work for the Buenos Aires Herald, then started working for Reuters. I wrote a story about Argentina’s universities having funding problems and all these challenges. That got printed in the Washington Post, and I was so excited. As a wire reporter, you don’t always get your stories in the print paper.” A reporting habit she’s learned: “One of the big advantages of being a foreign correspondent is that everything is new to you in that country—the political system, culture, idioms, the way people talk in politics. So you bring a fresh eye to it and notice things that you take for granted in your own country. That’s one of the things that can make foreign correspondents be such effective narrators of what’s happening in a given country. I’ll try to remind myself occasionally, here in the US, to observe political situations, how the military works, or how the government does things, as if I had never grown up around it.” How being a foreign correspondent changed her perception of the US’s role in the world: “Having to report on the repercussions of American foreign policy and military activities overseas makes you take a hard look at the way we do business and what the United States can do, for good or for ill.” On being a woman as a foreign correspondent: “I don’t feel like I face too many barriers, and sometimes [being a woman] is actually an advantage. For example, if you were in Afghanistan as a female reporter, there’s some things you have to do to reflect local customs, but you could [also] interview women in a way that a male reporter wouldn’t be able to.”   Star to Watch Priscilla Alvarez CNN Photograph by Lauren Bulbin. As the daughter of Argentinean immigrants, Priscilla Alvarez has long been fascinated by the subject matter she covers as CNN’s immigration correspondent. Though the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has sparked a particularly turbulent time for her beat, she’s been telling the human stories at the heart of immigration policy since she joined the network in 2019. A Virginia native, she started her career in local news–including an internship at her hometown paper, the now-defunct Leesburg Today. Where she grew up: Leesburg. What it’s like to report on immigration: “It has always been a challenging issue. I’m never not learning. I get to a point where I think I understand something, and then there’s ten more things about it. It’s been very satisfying.” Hardest part of her job: “It is so emotional—there are real people experiencing the policy changes under any given administration. But it’s also so politically charged that both sides struggle to even talk about it. Trying to work in that space is hard.” Work she’s proudest of: “I came [to CNN] from print—I worked at National Journal and then went to the Atlantic and did more politics coverage. Then I came over to network television and got to do immigration [coverage], but I’ve also been able to do the White House and campaigns. Being able to pivot and do different beats is an incredible learning opportunity, and just being willing to jump in-to it has been something I’ve been very proud of.” Most memorable reporting: “During the Biden administration, a surge of unaccompanied children were crossing the border. We were covering every development and breaking a lot of news on the numbers. Under [Trump’s] administration, [I remember] one story in particular of a family that chose early on to self-deport and the Trump administration’s push to have more of that. [What] I’m proud of is telling the stories of people who are affected by policy, but also the accountability of government.” How she stays sane: “I have a Bernese mountain dog named Luna. She is the ultimate stress relief.”   Past Winners   2025 Margaret Brennan CBS News   Elisabeth Bumiller New York Times   Francesca Chambers USA Today   Vivian Salama Wall Street Journal 2024 Carol Leonnig The Washington Post   Meridith McGraw Politico   Rachel Scott ABC   Kara Swisher Vox media   2023 Jacqueline Alemany The Washington Post   Gloria Borger CNN   Asma Khalid NPR   Kelly O’Donnell NBC 2022 Kaitlan Collins CNN   Kathleen Parker The Washington Post   Martha Raddatz ABC   Ayesha Rascoe NPR   2021 Yamiche Alcindor PBS   Karen Attiah The Washington Post   Susan Glasser The New Yorker   Norah O’Donnell CBS 2020 Molly Ball Time   Rita Braver CBS   Anna Palmer Politico   Kristen Welker NBC   2019 Andrea Mitchell NBC   Ashley Parker The Washington Post   Abby Phillip CNN   Amanda Terkel HuffPost 2018 Amanda Bennett Voice of America   Audie Cornish NPR   Lynn Sweet The Chicago Sun-Times   Amy Walter Cook Political Report   2017 Mary Katharine Ham CNN   Mary Louise Kelly NPR   Jane Mayer The New Yorker   Cokie Roberts NPR/ABC/PBS 2016 Dana Bash CNN   Kathryn Lopez National Review   Susan Page USA Today   Carolyn Ryan The New York Times   This article appears in the May 2026 issue of Washingtonian.The post Meet the Winners of the 2026 Washington Women in Journalism Awards first appeared on Washingtonian. ...read more read less