Alan Rusbridger, Editor of the Guardian to Receive Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism

By: Press Release | Harvard Kennedy School

CAMBRIDGE, MA – Alan Rusbridger, editor of the British-based Guardian newspaper, will address an audience of students, faculty, journalists and members of the public on Tuesday, March 6 at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The program begins at 6 p.m. in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, and is sponsored by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

Rusbridger will receive the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism in recognition of his leadership in the Guardian’s five-year investigation and exposure of phone hacking by employees of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. He also led the Guardian’s negotiations with Julian Assange and subsequent publication of WikiLeaks documents. Rusbridger has been instrumental in the Guardian’s “digital-first” business strategy.

Alan Rusbridger has been editor of the Guardian since 1995. He is editor-in-­chief of Guardian News & Media, a member of the GNM and GMG Boards and a member of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian and the Observer.  

Rusbridger’s career began at the Cambridge Evening News, where he trained as a reporter before first joining the Guardian in 1979. He worked as a general reporter, feature writer and diary columnist before leaving to succeed Clive James and Julian Barnes as the Observer’s TV critic. In 1987, he worked as the Washington correspondent for the London Daily News before returning to the Guardian as a feature writer. He was made deputy editor in 1994, when he first started working on the paper’s initial forays into digital publishing.  

One of the top 10 global news sites, it has regularly been voted the best newspaper website in the world. The Guardian won the Newspaper of the Year Award at the 2011 Press Awards, which are given in Britain by the Society of Editors. Campaign magazine named the Guardian as Medium of the Year, 2011.

Past recipients of the Goldsmith Career Award include Frank Rich, Seymour Hersh, Christiane Amanpour, Peter Jennings, Gwen Ifill, David Fanning and Daniel Schorr. The Goldsmith Awards also include a major prize for investigative reporting and two book prizes.