The following is a special presentation of WTCI in Chattanooga, north Georgia, and the Tennessee Valley.

Good evening.

I'm Judy Woodruff.

Just what piques the curiosity of this longtime career journalist.

That I try to find out as much as I can about what they're what's going on in their minds and what they're thinking.

And what will she say about the relevance of television news topics today?

Join me, Allison Leibovitz, as I sit down with PBS NewsHour, our very own Judy Woodruff.

It's a candid and revealing interview you don't want to miss.

Straight ahead on the A-list, Judy Woodruff.

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she's the daughter of a career military family.

Her success as a television journalist has made her name and face recognizable across the country.

Judy's career launched in the South at an Atlanta affiliate, and she worked in local news before moving on to the network level at NBC, PBS and CNN.

Her climb through the ranks was not just as a woman in network news, but as a professio Well, Judy, welcome to the A-list.

We are so excited to have you on the show.

I am delighted to be in Chattanooga again.

Well, I always find it interesting to interview journalists because I feel like we're turning the tables on you.

So and that's how I feel.

I'd much rather be in your chair than this one.

Well, tell me about that comfort level.

How how comfortable are you being interviewed?

And if that's not your comfort level?

Why are you much more comfortable on the other side of the table?

You know, it's always it's just what I do.

What I do is I ask people questions and I try to find out as much as I can about what they're what's going on in their minds and what they're thinking.

And so when the tables are turned, it's it's different because I know what it's like to be an interviewer and to try to get information out of somebody.

So.

So I'm on guard.

I'll try to be nice.

Now, when was that aha moment?

When did you figure out, I think this might be the path and I think I'm really good at it.

Well, two different things.

One, I wasn't sure I was good at it, but but when I was in school and I didn't know what I wanted to do, I started out majoring in math because I wasn't sure where I was headed and what I could do.

And then I happened to have a professor at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina, who got me really interested in political science.

And I hadn't paid a lot of attention to politics before that, but I started thinking about it and thinking about, you know, the difference it could make and that it can make in our lives.

And I got so interested, I changed majors.

I transferred to Duke University and I got a job in the summer, working two summers, working for my congressman in Washington.

And I just fell in love with the you know, with everything about it, with the idea that this is where decisions get made that affect the lives of all of us.

And it caught me up.

And then the more I thought about it, the more I thought I'd like to be a part of this.

But I didn't know quite how to do it.

And the second summer I was in Washington.

Some of the women I worked with on Capitol Hill said, You don't want to come right back here after college because this was the late 1960s.

And even though the women's movement had gotten under way, there really weren't many opportunities that they felt any way were serious there.

These were women with law degrees, graduate degrees who were virtually clerks, and they were kind of discouraged at that point.

And the message they conveyed to me was think before you, you know, you just come to Washington and volunteer to sweep the floor somewhere.

So I went back to Duke my senior year and I thought, what am I going to do?

And I happened to be taking a course at marketing, animation and politics.

And that's where it all came together.

I had a professor, I started talking to him and he said, Have you ever thought about covering politics?

And I applied for a job as a secretary, talking about entry level.

And entry level for Judy in this newsroom meant writing letters for the news director and cleaning film.

Up until the late 1960s, there had been very little, if any, female network news journalists.

In the early seventies, women represented only 11% of the journalists in television news.

I kept bugging him to hire me to be a reporter, or at least let me go out with a crew.

And the answer was, We already have a woman reporter, which they did.

They had one woman reporter unwavering.

Judy's persistence landed her on air and eventually in the direction she had set her mind on the political arena.

I just wouldn't take no for an answer.

I mean, I was relentless.

I bug this news director when he said, We don't.

We already have a woman.

I said, Well, but yeah, she's but she's also doing the weather and she does features and I want to do serious news.

And I bugged him and begged him.

Did you feel that struggle back then?

I know maybe looking back, you realize it might have been a tougher climb as a woman.

But did you did you realize that struggle while you were going through it?

To some extent, sure.

But everywhere you looked at that point, women were still coming into their own and even beginning to.

If you'd taken the chance to look around, you would have seen that women had a long way to go.

And it was no different.

In journalism.

We were reflecting, frankly, the rest of society.

And then the moment came along.

Believe it or not, it was President Richard Nixon who, when he was in office, mandated that the television or really help push that laws and regulations come into place that required more women be on the air and more minorities be on the air.

So that's that really coincided with the time I was coming out of school and I was trying to get into into into journalism and into television news.

And I was a direct beneficiary of that.

It was the women's movement.

And it was some some new movement out of Washington pushing, pushing that.

Long story short, they hired me to be the weekend weather girl.

This station only did one weekend show 11:00 on Sunday nights.

So I would I would come in at 6:00.

Well, I was like Cinderella because during the week I was still the secretary.

And then I would come in on Sunday night and I would show up at 6:00 and for 5 hours I would study the weather wires and get the map all ready.

And I found it.

You can make little notes to yourself on the map.

So you can see it, but the audience can't.

And that's where I learned how to do television.

It was 3 minutes or 4 minutes, once a week for six months.

Wow.

I really didn't like it and I wasn't very good at it.

But that was how I got my foot in the door.

And we sort of mutually agreed that I wasn't very good at it.

And about the same time I was offered a job as a reporter at another station in Atlanta, and that's when things got more serious.

But again, that was, as you said, that was the result of bugging and pestering and calling and and a very enlightened news director who decided he needed a woman reporter covering the state legislature, which is what I really wanted to do.

That was truly where I cut my teeth.

Covering the Georgia state legislature.

There were 205 members of the House and I think 56 members of the state Senate.

And you had to get to know as many of them as possible.

The state House Appropriations Committee chairman was a man named Sloppy Floyd James.

Sloppy Floyd.

He became a very good source for me.

And it was it was truly where I learned how to, you know, that reporters not only have to do their homework and they have to to know what they're talking about when they write and work on their stories, They also have to get to know people.

And you've got to get people to trust you or they won't give you information.

And so it was a terrific learning opportunity for me.

And Judy gained that trust, not just of those serving in the political arena, but also the trust of viewers.

But just so that we're clear, why has it been so difficult to get to the site of these leaks?

You know, honestly, it's by being credible and by being trustworthy.

I I'm comfortable with people.

I can talk to them.

I think I think people are often when you talk to somebody, some people hold back.

And so you have to work harder at it with some and particularly politicians who are used to guarding information closely and in in especially after I got to Washington and you're dealing with people who have been in politics for their whole lives, whole adult lives, and they're used to reporters trying to get them to say something.

You've got to work especially hard at just being somebody people can trust.

And that means honoring confidences.

Not everything someone says to you is always on the record and you have to be able to balance that.

There's this, if you will, Creed.

I think that all of us in journalism have to honor.

I don't believe in violating.

If I tell somebody that something is either on background, meaning I won't use their name in association with it, or if it's off the record, meaning I won't use it, then I honor that.

And I think that's one of the reason people are willing to talk to me and to other reporters who who who do their work.

Judy has built a credible reputation with over three decades of experience as a television journalist.

I'll share more on her career in just a moment.

But there is more to Judy's life than just her career in television.

She has achieved a balance many find elusive, and that is a successful marriage, family and career.

And for people who don't know, you're married to a pretty high.

Highly ranked political journalist yourself.

To another journalist.

That's right.

We decided on our job.

I know.

What was I thinking?

We decided a long time ago the only way for a journalist to be truly happy is to be married to another crazy journalist.

Only because it takes another journalist to know the ups and downs of this wild business that we're in now.

And how did you meet Al?

It was in Plains, Georgia, in 1976.

It was during the presidential campaign.

I was covering Jimmy Carter for NBC, and Al had been covering several of the presidential candidates for The Wall Street Journal, where he worked in and the the Carter campaign put together a softball match.

Actually, the press corps did.

Well, we were playing it was the press corps playing the Carter staff.

But I was in I was in center field and and Al was joining the campaign for a couple of days.

I was on the campaign for a few weeks at that point.

And he came over somebody.

He had somebody who I was, and he came over and out literally in centerfield and introduced himself as we were starting, I don't know, the third inning of the game.

I don't know.

And that's how we met.

And I knew who he was because I had seen him, you know, seen him around.

He was.

And then that November, Carter won the election, I went I lobbied NBC to send me to Washington because at that point I was still based in their southeastern bureau in Atlanta, and they sent me to Washington.

I moved there in January of 1977, and I ran into Al at a restaurant in March.

We were out to dinner, different people in March of that year, and he came over and said hello and I'll never forget it.

Both of us will never forget it, he said.

He said, you know, how do you like living in Washington?

I said, Like it when I'm homesick.

So he immediately thought, Hmm.

And he called me a few days later and three, three years later we were married.

The rest is history.

The rest is history.

Yeah.

Do you ever comment on each other's work?

Does he ever give you opinions you don't want to hear?

We both tell each other we think something didn't work.

And.

But that's.

You know, I once I want somebody who can say that.

I mean, we all need that.

So that's, you know, it's great to have another journalist, another critic in the House.

His judgment, I value.

So that's good.

How important are your children to you and maintaining that family integrity, aside from from the work, especially in kind of that Washington bubble?

My husband and my children, that's the most important thing in the world to me.

And it hasn't always been easy to juggle because once I was married, I had already established a career.

I was working then for NBC when I had my first our first son, Jeffrey, in 1981, I was already a White House correspondent for NBC with a lot of responsibility, a lot of on air responsibility and and an expectation.

The job is is very high priority in your life.

But I made the decision a long time ago that I not only wanted this career, I wanted a family.

And I went into Al and I talked a lot about this.

We were married that we both wanted children.

We didn't know how many, but we'd like to have several children and we ended up having three.

And it's our older son happens to have a disability.

He was born with spinal bifida and then he later was actually injured during a surgical mistake and was and is now profoundly disabled.

He's in a wheelchair and is is impaired physically and in terms of speech and vision and has somehow had the courage to get through college and is now living in a in a wonderful program in Maryland that he just moved into two months ago.

And then there are two other children who are hugely important, Benjamin, who's 23, Lauren who's 20, and being there for their lives.

And but I don't underestimate the difficulty for any woman who's juggling family and career, because there is no one path that works.

There's no one method that works.

And society expects women still to hold it together.

You know, to be the the perfect wife, the perfect homemaker.

The house looks great.

Company can come over at any time.

And there's not a thing on the floor.

Mad Men is still.

That's right.

That's right.

40 years later, 60 years later.

And if that woman happens to have a career that she's hugely successful and so forth.

And course, life is a lot more complicated than that.

But it doesn't it it just creates a lot of pressure on women.

And there've been all these surveys about women feel more stress today than ever before.

And I think that's unfortunate.

And I think that all we can do is just do the best we can to let them know that even when we can't be there for that event after school on one occasion, or when we can't be there every minute, that they're still the most important thing in our lives.

Judy and Al's children are members of Generation Next, a generation that's growing up with technology that is exceedingly more tolerant than past generations, that is willing to postpone adulthood and is swamped with debt.

Judy traveled the nation examining the beliefs, strengths, weaknesses and concerns of this generation already.

This is a generation that's looking at the environment.

They don't have much patience with war.

They don't like the idea of military conflict.

For the sake of conflict, they want to know how do you avoid all that?

And I look to this younger generation to make some really important changes in our lives and in our country and in our world, because all this you see some of these traits among young people all around the globe, not just in the United States.

So I have I have a lot of of of hope for this generation.

Why does it seem.

That theoretically the most important stories of the day are primarily depressing?

I mean, it's just it's just the nature of the business.

And I think sometimes it gives sort of a morbid feel to what we do because we feel like we're just relentlessly reporting negative.

Whether it's earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, war is relentlessly depressing, downbeat, but that's our job.

And sure, we should look, I think for the for the sunshine, for the happy stories every once in a while.

But our main job is to think about what do people really need to know in order to function And more often than not, it's not always going to be great news.

Do you think this incoming generation of thinkers, this 18 now to 25 year olds, which were the basis of the documentary that you created with PBS in 2007, Which generation next do you think they will change the tone of that?

Do you think they're are they more optimistic?

I know they're they're probably, as you said, more civically engaged.

Will they change the tone of what they feel is are they important stories?

I think it's it's it's impossible for me to know the answer to that.

But what we do know from research about them and I just in the last few days, I've been part of a project with the Pew Research Center, and they surveyed thousands of young people all over the country to take their temperature again two years later.

And what you find about this generation is that they're they they are optimistic.

I mean, in the teeth of this horrible recession, which has the younger generation unable to find a job, moving back home with mom and dad, depending on their parents for income, for housing, they still have this long term optimism about the future that somehow they will eventually earn enough money to do well and they'll be okay.

But but overlying or underlying all that is a sense of realism about this generation, that there's that they know what's going on in the world.

They have a very clear eyed view of what's happening on the whole planet, not just in their neighborhood and in their country.

And they want to deal with reality.

They're not interested in just the Pollyanna view.

So I don't know whether that means they're going to change the definition of news.

I think the fact that they're civic minded means they care about other people.

There's a compassion there, which I think is is greatly to be admired.

But I think when it comes to dealing with the world as we know it, I think they will look at it.

They'll be coldly realistic about it, and then they'll try to make it better.

With all the new mediums converging with television, creating multiple outlets for storytelling and providing immediacy, the journalism and news delivery industry continues to evolve, but one thing remains the same, and that's the tried and true ethics for gathering and reporting.

Do you ever find it.

Difficult to balance your fundamental role and responsibility as a journalist with maybe your personal feelings and moral value system?

I came into journalism in the early 1970s and they're what I like to call the old fashioned values of journalism we're in.

We're not here to tell you what we think.

We're here to tell you what is going on and to be honest brokers and to report on what's going on and not to inject ourselves and our opinions into the story.

And after a point, if you've learned enough about something, people will trust you to analyze it and to pull it all together.

And, you know, help us understand what it means.

And I think I think it's fine for some of us to do that.

But I do worry that it blurs the line between reporting and and editorials.

I mean, there used to be a fairly clear, bright line between reporting and analysis and editorial.

And now I think it's largely mushed together.

And people I think the public has a hard time sometimes figuring out what is this?

This person is reporting one day and then the next day I see them on television spouting off.

And so if that's what they think, is that what I am to believe about all everything they report.

Now, having been with network television, with NBC, and then your stint with CNN and now with PBS, is there a difference in the way that news is conveyed depending on the source?

Absolutely there is.

I mean, for one thing, I mean, CNN is a 24 seven news operation.

And so when I left PBS in 1993, after ten years at the news hour and made a very difficult decision to go to CNN because they frankly, they were making me a wonderful offer to be part of their Washington anchor team.

I, I found this sort of buzzing, constantly awake machine that was just spewing news out constantly.

I still brought my own sensibilities as a reporter and my own drive and determination and and curiosity and, you know, whatever imprint we all put on the reporting that we do.

But I was part of this gigantic organism with a lot of urgency attached to it and and much more importance placed on getting it first than anything else and getting it right.

Always, always, but getting it first.

Whereas at the news hour, one hour a day, five days a week, we're telling you what we think are the most important stories you need to know.

Journal of the core of journalism is the same.

It's it's do your very best, get it right.

Don't make a mistake.

To make a mistake is horrible.

But I but at different speeds, you know, we're not so interested at the news hour and whether we have it a split second ahead of or behind somebody else, what's much more important to us is that when people sit down to watch the news hour, whether it's now on their television or on the Internet and they're watching it, you know that night at midnight or 2:00 in the morning, that it's that they are learning something about the most important things going on in the world around them.

That's the most important thing.

And who is your source for news?

What?

Whoa, besides this, besides Al, I started telling my husband to give him a plug.

Bloomberg News All right.

My sources multiple from the New York Times to to Bloomberg News to I read I read everything from Politico, which I think has become very important in Washington.

I read the NBC note in the morning.

I read magazines, The New Yorker, I read multiple newspapers.

I mean, but a lot of them now online because it's just so much easier to access all these sources of information.

And is there one interview that you aspire to get before you retire as a journalist or.

That's tough.

There's so many.

I really, really want to do it.

You know, I, I have not yet interviewed President Obama as president.

I'd like to do that.

Of course, he's done a lot of interviews.

I you know, I'm interested in interviewing some leaders of faith leaders because I think that they have a lot of influence in our country.

And so I I don't think the pope and I wouldn't speak the same language, but I would like to interview His Holiness at some point.

I'd be interested in interviewing some of the leaders in the Middle East and talking to them about, you know, what is holding what is holding peace back in that part of the world.

And is there one great piece of advice you can give someone who's graduating college now in in such a challenging economy?

That would be don't be discouraged because it is tough out there.

Be be determined, be creative.

And when you get a “no ” or you get a rejection or you lose your job, pick yourself up and keep going.

In my experience, that's the difference between people who ultimately succeed and those who don't.

It's the people who it's how you deal with adversity.

We all face adversity.

This younger generation is facing adversity at a very early age, and so they're going to have to learn those skills of resilience and bouncing back a whole lot earlier than most of the rest of us did.

But it's it's just keep going no matter what.

And you are living proof of that.

I like to think so.

Oh, it's been a pleasure.

Thank you so much for.

Joining us and I've enjoyed it.

We hope we'll get to D.C. sometime soon.

I hope so.

We look great.

Be sure to join me next week as I sit down with musical artist and past American Idol finalist Danny Gokey.

And I always went back to country music because I love the lyrical content.

I love what it stands for.

I love the fans, I love the people and I love the music.

Hear more about his decision to pursue a country music career and what he plans to do next.

I'm Allison Leibovitz.

See you then.