NEXT AVENUE SPECIAL SECTION
Next Avenue’s Advocates for Aging
This year, for the first time, Next Avenue partnered with the American Society on Aging (ASA) to select eight Advocates for Aging.
Formerly known as Influencers in Aging, the new initiative emphasizes the forward-thinking work of individuals in areas such as caregiving, employment, public policy, perceptions of aging, longevity and health.
The 2024 Advocates for Aging are Judy Woodruff, Bill McKibben, Carl Honoré, Mona Mourshed, Fernando Torres-Gil, Jan Golden, DeLon Canterbury and Rosanne Corcoran.
Judy Woodruff: Seeking Solutions in a Divided America By Sabrina Crews
Her itinerary includes Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and the South. She'll delve into faith and religion, immigration, gun control, what's on the minds of Republicans and Democrats as they confront their national conventions, and even how politics affects modern dating. Additionally, Woodruff — whose son Jeffrey was born with spina bifida — hopes to spend more time covering disability issues with the NewsHour series “Disability Reframed.”
When PBS NewsHour's Judy Woodruff announced over a year ago that she planned to pause her anchoring duties to travel the country as a reporter, she knew the move might be misconstrued. "I wanted to make it clear that I wasn't stepping off the edge of the earth," she laughs. "A lot of people assume when you make a change like that, you're ending your career." If anything, Woodruff's work has only intensified since. So far, she's visited 16 states and produced 27 stories, including a one-hour primetime special for her NewsHour series “America at a Crossroads." Convinced that America's fractured political climate is better understood outside of Washington, Woodruff aims to meet with and listen to as many people as possible about the state of our country. "As a political reporter, I have never seen us this divided," Woodruff, 77, tells Next Avenue. "And the answers are even more complex and multi-layered than we knew."
"As a political reporter, I have never seen us this divided."
Though she planned to switch to reporting for "a couple of years, at least," actually doing it, Woodruff says, felt emotional. "When you add it all up, I've been at NewsHour for twenty- seven years," she explains. "In my eleven years of anchoring, there was an essential connection between me, the audience and the program. It was in my DNA."
Read the full interviews with each Advocate on NextAvenue.org
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MAY 2024
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