She had an incredible life.
November 14, 2016
By Sam Roberts
Gwen Ifill, (click here) a groundbreaking journalist who covered the White House, Congress and national campaigns during three decades for The Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC and, most prominently, PBS, died on Monday at a hospice in Washington. She was 61.
The cause was complications of uterine cancer, her brother Roberto said.
In a distinguished career, Ms. Ifill was in the forefront of a journalism vanguard as a black woman in a field dominated by white men....
She always gave back.
June 9, 2015
By Corrinne Segal
This April, (click here) Gwen Ifill received a letter that began: “Dear Ms. Ifill, I hope you remember me, but if you do not, my name is Sophie Sabin.” That letter became a catalyst to an inspirational moment for hundreds of middle school students in Newark, New Jersey, today.
Sophie admired Ifill for years as a middle school student at Philip’s Academy Charter School in Newark. “She was a role model for who I wanted to be,” she said.
Sophie first “met” Ifill in April 2014 in a Skype interview for PBS NewsHour’s Student Reporting Labs while she was an eighth-grade student participating in the program at Philip’s Academy. One of her first questions for Ifill: why would she take the time to give an interview to a middle school student? Ifill said: “It’s because I once was you.”
That line stuck with Sophie, and that summer Student Reporting Labs selected her as a Student Reporting Lab All-Star, giving her the opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C., and meet Ifill face-to-face....
