About the duPont Center and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards

duPont Award silver baton

The purpose of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards is to bring the best in television and radio journalism to professional and public attention and to honor those who produce it. The duPont Awards engender a collective spirit for the industry and inform the public of the contributions news organizations make to their communities and to the nation as a whole.

Learn more about Alfred I. duPont

Winners of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards receive gold or silver batons designed by the late American architect Louis I. Kahn. The batons are inscribed with the famous observation about the power of television by the late Edward R. Murrow:

"This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box."
(Address to the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Chicago, October 15, 1958.)

The duPont Awards ceremony was first televised on PBS stations in 1978, produced in collaboration with Thirteen/WNET in New York. The broadcast became an annual public television offering, giving viewers an opportunity to witness the accomplishments of a wide variety of radio and television stations, including winners at local television and radio stations that might not otherwise receive national exposure.

Telling the Truth: The Best in Broadcast Journalism

Beginning in 2004, the annual PBS broadcast became a documentary about the duPont Award-winning programs. Taking a completely different approach from the annual duPont Awards program carried on PBS for the previous 25 years, Telling the Truth draws on compelling themes in several of the duPont Award-winners. Through interviews with the reporters and producers of these winners, the programs demonstrate how great journalistic work emerges from America’s radio and television newsrooms each day.

Telling the Truth is produced by RAINmedia in association with Thirteen/WNET and the Graduate School of Journalism.

History of the Awards

Jessie Ball duPont created the awards as a memorial to her husband, who died in 1935. Her goal was to honor Alfred I. duPont’s dedication to progressive reform and to freedom of information in the public interest by recognizing the “essential and patriotic service” that radio and its commentators provided during the early years of World War II. The criteria she established then still hold:

“. . .to honor distinguished and meritorious performanceof public service by aggressive, consistently excellent and accurate gathering and reporting of news; the presentation of expert, informed and reliable interpretation of news and opinion; and encouragement of initiative, integrity and public service.”

The programs that have won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards document history as it happens. They have captured everything from battlefront reports and commentary to peacetime coverage of social issues, from news of the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam to economics, science, and the environment, and from international affairs to small-town stories of ordinary people.

As technology changed, the duPont Awards expanded to include television, and later cable programming. As the forms of television and radio journalism have multiplied, the Awards have responded by honoring investigative series, magazine programs, documentaries, independent and online productions.

Jury Composition

Serving on the jury with Chair and Columbia Journalism School Broadcast Program Coordinator Ann K. Cooper are:

Jonnet Abeles, former duPont director and associate dean at the Journalism School;
A’Lelia Bundles, author, journalist and former network television news executive;
Callie Crossley, media critic, Beat the Press, WGBH-TV, Boston, program manager, Nieman Foundation and former producer, ABC News and the PBS series Eyes on the Prize;
Mark Jurkowitz, associate director, Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, former media critic;
John Martin, former correspondent, ABC News, and adjunct professor at the school;
Michael Skoler, founder of the Center for Innovation in Journalism at American Public Media, former NPR foreign correspondent;
Al Tompkins, broadcast/online group leader, Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, Fla.; former local station news director, producer and reporter;
Richard Wald, Fred Friendly Professor of Journalism, Columbia University
Bill Wheatley, retired vice president, NBC News.

Contact Information:
Abi Wright, Director
Jonnet Abeles, Program Director, Prizes and Programs
dupontawards@jrn.columbia.edu
212/854-5047