The Richard M. Clurman Award

Richard M. Clurman
Photo by Mary Hillard

Behind everyone who achieves something very important, very early, is an older someone who critiques, applauds, knows the ropes, and maybe pulls a string. Richard M. Clurman was such a man, most famously as Chief of Correspondents of the Time-Life News Service (1960–69), one of the biggest news operations in the world.

Clurman had been an originator of the Awards as a member of the Foundation's board. He was solely responsible for operationalizing them. When he died in May 1996, the Board and its panel of judges quickly decided to memorialize him with a new prize. Equally easily, they decided that he should be remembered as a superb, on the job mentor.

The Richard M. Clurman Award has been presented to Charles Peters, Washington Monthly; Gordon Manning, NBC News (retired); William F. Buckley Jr., National Review; Mary McGrory, The Washington Post; Thomas Winship, International Center for Journalists; Arthur Gelb, The New York Times; Clay Felker, The Felker Magazine Center; Eugene Patterson, St. Petersburg Times; Jim Bellows, New York Herald Tribune; Bill Kovach, Chairman, Committee of Concerned Journalists; John Siegenthaler, Founder, First Amendment Center, Eugene L. Roberts, Jr, Professor, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland and Judy Woodruff, Senior Correspondent, “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” PBS.

Eugene L. Roberts, Jr.

“No one has done more to develop young journalists.”
—Eugene L. Roberts, Jr.

Eugene L. Roberts, Jr.— Recipient of the Richard M. Clurman Award for mentoring young journalists, Pulitzer Prize for “The Race Beat.” Roberts is a former national and managing editor for The New York Times and executive editor and president of The Philadelphia Inquirer, which he led to 17 Pulitzer Prizes in 18 years.

“I have found the Livingston Awards more valuable to me as an editor than the Pulitzer or any other award I can name; precisely because it focuses me on good talent in an early part of a writer’s career. I want to commend the organization, Livingston Awards. No one has done more to develop young journalists.”