National reporter visits Iowa for award

The chief Congressional reporter for A-B-C News was in Dubuque last night to accept an award at Clarke College. Cokie Roberts won the 2002 Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Medallion of Excellence in Mass Communication. The award is named after a Clarke College graduate who took Roberts under her wing in the 1960s. Roberts talked about Dickerson’s influence on T-V news. She says Dickerson did a “remarkable” thing for men and women to follow.Dickerson achieved many firsts in her career, including being the first woman to host a daily network news program. She worked both at C-B-S and N-B-C in the 1970s and had been a network evening news anchor for a time. Roberts talked about Dickerson’s long uphill fight. Roberts says it seems easy now, but it took a lot for Dickerson to blaze the way.Roberts says today’s college students may find it hard to appreciate the achievements Dickerson made as today’s world is so much different. She says it would seem like Afghanistan and the Taliban’s treatment of women.Dickerson died in 1997. She was from Wisconsin and had attended Clarke College in the 1940s.