Investigative Journalists Honored

Don Hewitt of the television news show 60 Minutes and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post will receive the first Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, Marvin L. Kalb, director of the Kennedy School's Joan Shorenstein Barone center, said yesterday.

Kalb said the prize committee chose Hewitt, the executive producer of CBS News' 60 Minutes, and Woodward, assistant managing editor for investigative reporting for The Washington post, for their lifetime dedication to investigative journalism.

While kalb said subsequent prizes will be awarded to journalists "for a specific piece of investigative reporting that had been done in the previous year," the committee decided the inaugural prize should honor career achievement.

"This is the first year," Kalb said. "We ought to honor the concept of investigative reporting."

"These two represented the best in terms of career," he continued." One for television and one for newspapers."

Woodward, along with partner Carl Bernstein, was widely acclaimed for his ground-breaking investigatory coverage of the Watergate break-in.

Hewitt and Woodward, who will receive their awards on April 23, have decided to donate their prize money of $ 15,000 each to Harvard and Yale University, respectively.

"When I told Hewitt about the prize... three seconds passed and he said `I want you to take that money and give it to needy students," Kalb said.

The Goldsmith prize is one in a series prizes established at the Barone Center to encourage a "better relationship between the press and the government," Kalb said.

The Goldsmith Prizes, funded by the Goldsmith-Greenfield Foundation, fall into several categories. Most of them serve as research scholarships for students and sholars "doing work in press, politics, public policy, or government," Kalb said.