Jeffrey Goldberg to be honored with the 2026 Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism

Each year, the Shorenstein Center presents the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism to recognize outstanding contributions to the field and honor work that has enriched our political discourse and our society. This year’s winner is Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, and moderator of Washington Week With The Atlantic on PBS. 

“Jeffrey has steered a storied institution through a period of immense disruption and elevated The Atlantic as a critical resource for investigation, analysis, and ideas,” said Shorenstein Director Nancy Gibbs. “At a time when the entire industry is navigating new ethical and editorial challenges, Jeffrey’s excellence and enterprise both as a journalist and editorial leader serves as a beacon for us all.” 

Goldberg will be the featured speaker at this year’s Goldsmith Awards ceremony, to be held on April 9, 2026 in the JFK Jr. Forum at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The event will be livestreamed at GoldsmithAwards.org and ShorensteinCenter.org. Registration to attend the event in person will open soon, with priority given to Harvard ID holders.

2026 Goldsmith Career Award Winner Jeffrey Goldberg:  

Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor in chief of The Atlantic and is the moderator of Washington Week With The Atlantic on PBS. He joined The Atlantic in 2007 as a national correspondent and in 2016 was named editor in chief, the 15th person to serve as editor in The Atlantic’s 168-year history. During his editorship, The Atlantic has set new audience and subscription records, and won its first-ever Pulitzer Prizes. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, The Atlantic received the National Magazine Award for General Excellence from the American Society of Magazine Editors, the top award in the industry. 

Before joining The Atlantic, Goldberg served as the Middle East correspondent and then the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker. Earlier in his career, he was a writer for The New York Times Magazine. He began his career as a police reporter for The Washington Post. Goldberg is the author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror and On Heroism: McCain, Milley, Mattis, and the Cowardice of Donald Trump. A former fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, he also served as a public-policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and as the distinguished visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Goldberg is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Magazine Award for Reporting; the Daniel Pearl Award for Reporting; the Overseas Press Club’s award for human-rights reporting; the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Prize for best investigative reporting. 

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The Goldsmith Awards, founded in 1991 and funded by a gift from the Greenfield Foundation, strives to foster a more insightful and spirited public debate about government, politics and the press, and to demonstrate the essential role of a free press in a thriving democracy. 

Learn more at GoldsmithAwards.org.