The 34th annual Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting has been presented to Jennifer Jacobs, senior White House reporter for Bloomberg News, and W.J. Hennigan, senior national correspondent for TIME Magazine. Jacobs received honors for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency in 2020, while Hennigan was awarded for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense. The announcement was made virtually during the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation’s annual meeting by Michael Ford, son of President Gerald R. Ford and chairman of the foundation.
Jacobs is part of a team that regularly breaks news on the happenings within the White House. She was recognized for her reporting about the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the implications of the president’s own illness for his political future. Jacobs, who grew up in Iowa, graduated from Iowa State University. She went on to work for the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, the Post-Standard in Syracuse, then the Des Moines Register, where she covered state government and the 2008, 2012, and 2016 presidential campaigns. She headed to the nation’s capital to report on the Trump campaign for Bloomberg in spring 2016 and now writes about the Biden White House.
The judges noted “The final year of Donald Trump’s presidency had all the drama of the first three, with a divisive political environment, turbulent relations with the press, and an unconventional decision-making process in the White House. Yet, a Senate impeachment trial and a long campaign for re-election at the start of 2020 were soon overshadowed by the story of the year: a once-in-a-century pandemic.”
While commending Jacobs’ reporting on the presidency, the judges said, “No challenge mattered more to the fate of Mr. Trump’s presidency, and few journalists on the story showed greater resourcefulness than Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg News. After being the first to report that one of the president’s closest advisors had tested positive for the coronavirus, Ms. Jacobs filed a series of exclusives on the spread of the virus among White House personnel. She followed up with accurate, well sourced reports.”
Hennigan, who covers national security issues for TIME, was awarded for capturing the role of the U.S. military throughout the progression of the pandemic, from tracking the spread, to rapidly deploying makeshift medical facilities in major U.S. cities, to handling the overwhelming onslaught of citizens who succumbed to COVID-19, to managing the distribution of the vaccine with its strict protocols and delicate handling procedures.
Before joining TIME in 2017, Hennigan worked for more than eight years at the Los Angeles Times, where he covered the Pentagon and the defense industry. He has earned several awards and citations, including APME’s International Perspective Award, National Press Club’s Michael Dornheim Award, and he was part of a team of journalists who won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. His series with Ralph Vartabedian about the aging infrastructure that underpins America’s nuclear weapons complex received the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense in 2014 (view announcement). A native of Chicago, Hennigan has degrees from Northern Illinois University and Arizona State University.
When awarding Hennigan, the judges said, “Hennigan’s reports embedded him in the heart of the military’s daily business — likely placing him at increased risk of contracting the novel coronavirus — to put a human face on national defense and public health issues that paralyzed the globe.”
Additionally, the judges commended Hennigan for providing a look at the challenges the military faced, by saying, “Hennigan’s body of work provided a true, vivid, and apolitical representation of how the military lived through 2020 – and the extraordinary challenges it faced. His stories calmly documented what Americans lived through during a year that most will remember for its extreme departure from life as we knew it. Hennigan’s work treated the national security element in a unique and memorable way, highlighting the role of military organizations at the nexus of civil and military relations, such as the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Guard, and military logisticians, in addition to the nascent U.S. Space Force.”
The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation sponsors the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency and National Defense to recognize and encourage thoughtful, insightful, and enterprising work by journalists covering the presidency and national defense.
About the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation
The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation fosters increased awareness of the life, career, values, and legacy of America’s 38th President. It does so through activities designed to promote the high ideals of integrity, honesty, and candor that defined President Ford’s extraordinary career of public service. The Foundation promotes the ideas, values, commitment to public service and historical legacy of President Gerald R. Ford and further promotes greater civic engagement and recognition of integrity wherever it exists in the public arena. It supports permanent and changing exhibits designed to promote historical literacy; conferences; educational outreach and other programs, both scholarly and popular, including at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum.
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