As we dive headlong into the 2024 presidential election season, the Theodore H. White Lecture on Press & Politics returned on February 5, 2024 with journalist John Dickerson giving a lecture on the role and challenge for the media in the coming year.
Read the full text of Dickerson’s speech, “The Presidency Above the Campaign,” here.
Inaugurated in 1989, the Theodore H. White Lecture is the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy’s flagship speaker event on the intersection of media and politics. This year’s lecturer, John Dickerson, is currently anchor of CBS News Prime Time, as well as CBS News Chief Political Analyst, Senior National Correspondent, and CBS SUNDAY MORNING Contributor.
Prior to his current roles, Dickerson was co-anchor of CBS This Morning, and from 2015 to 2018 he was anchor of “Face The Nation,” and CBS News’ Chief Washington Correspondent. He spent 12 years at TIME magazine, including as its White House correspondent, and a decade as Slate magazine’s chief political correspondent. He is the author of three books, and has covered the last seven presidential campaigns.
In his 2024 Theodore H. White lecture, Dickerson explored the challenges of covering the presidency and presidential elections, and the upheval currently facing newsrooms as they perform their vital democratic role.
About Theodore H. White:
Theodore H. White set the standard for contemporary political journalism and campaign coverage. He began his career delivering The Boston Post, and entered Harvard College in 1932 on a newsboy’s scholarship. He studied Chinese history and Asian languages, and witnessed the bombing of Chongqing in 1939 while reporting on a Sheldon Fellowship. In 1959, White sought support for a 20-year research project, a retrospective of presidential campaigns. After fellow reporters advised him to drop the project, White took to the campaign trail, and changed the course of American political journalism with the publication of The Making of a President in 1960. The 1964, 1968 and 1972 editions of The Making of a President, along with America in Search of Itself, remain vital documents to the study of campaigns and the press. Before his death in 1986, White served on the Visiting Committee at the Kennedy School of Government; he was one of the architects of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
