Gwen Ifill

Moderator and Managing Editor
Washington Week

Gwen Ifill is moderator and managing editor of "Washington Week" and senior correspondent for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." She is also frequently asked to moderate debates in national elections, including the Vice Presidential debate during the 2004 election and the upcoming Vice Presidential debate scheduled for October. Ifill is also the author of the forthcoming book The Breakthrough: Politics in the Age of Obama. During the 2008 campaign season, Ifill is bringing Washington Week to live audiences around the country on a 10-city tour.

Now in its 40th year, Washington Week is the longest-running news and public affairs program on public television. Each week, Gwen Ifill brings together some of the best journalists in Washington to discuss the major stories of the week. Ifill has bolstered the program's journalistic roots and its commitment to hearing from the reporters who actually cover the news. Ifill joined both Washington Week and The NewsHour in 1999, interviewing newsmakers and reporting on issues ranging from foreign affairs to politics.

Before coming to PBS, she spent five years at NBC News as chief congressional and political correspondent, and still appears as an occasional roundtable panelist on Meet The Press. Ifill joined NBC News from The New York Times where she covered the White House and politics. She also covered national and local affairs for The Washington Post, Baltimore Evening Sun and Boston Herald American.

"I always knew I wanted to be a journalist, and my first love was newspapers," Ifill said. "But public broadcasting provides the best of both worlds-combining the depth of newspapering with the immediate impact of broadcast television."

A native of New York City and a graduate of Simmons College in Boston, Ifill has received more than a dozen honorary doctorates and is the recipient of several broadcasting excellence awards. She serves on the board of the Harvard University Institute of Politics, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Newseum and the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism.

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