Gwen Ifill, 61, of Washington, D.C., whose news career began at a Boston newspaper and grew into national prominence on television, died Nov. 14 from complications of uterine cancer at a Washington hospice.
Early in her career, Ifill was an intern and then a reporter for the Boston Herald American. She wrote about food and covered education there.
She was an active journalist up to her death, as moderator and managing editor for “Washington Week” on the Public Broadcasting System and as co-anchor and co-managing editor for “PBS NewsHour.”
She previously covered local politics for the Baltimore Evening Sun, and her first presidential campaign for The Washington Post, where she was a reporter from 1984 to 1991. She then joined The New York Times, where she was a White House correspondent. She also covered Capitol Hill for NBC.
Ifill was the moderator for vice presidential debates in 2004 and 2008 and co-moderator for one of the 2016 Democratic presidential primary debates.
She was the author of “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.”
She received the George Foster Peabody Award and the National Press Club’s Fourth Estate Award. The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism planned to present her with the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism recently. She was added to the National Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame in 2012.
Ifill leaves two brothers, Roberto and Earle, and a sister, Maria.
The obituaries were written, at least in part, from published reports by Bulletin correspondents Ashleane Alabre, Sophie Cannon, Jenna Ciccotelli, Nico Hall, Joshua Leaston, Georgeanne Oliver, Julia Preszler and Thomas Ward, undergraduate students at Northeastern University.