Eugene Robinson uses his column in The Washington Post to pick American society apart and then put it back together again in unexpected, and revelatory, new ways. To do this job of demolition and reassembly, Robinson relies on a large and varied tool kit: energy, curiosity, elegant writing. He saw, long before the recent election divided the states into Red and Blue, that politics and culture are always intertwined. He sees how the great trends that are reshaping our society are also reshaping our neighborhoods, our families, ourselves. Immigration, for example, is far more than a tally of how many people moved from somewhere else to America. It’s also the story of a changing inner-city block that rises or sinks as newcomers arrive. It’s the story of a woman, all but cloistered in her home country, who walks down a public street for the first time in her life without a veil. Or the story of a man, raised in a society where machismo still rules, learning for the first time to regard his wife as breadwinner, perhaps eventually as equal.


2014 Media Award Winner citation

“For decades, Eugene Robinson has been the “go to” journalist, rightly known for vision and judgment both to his Washington Post readers and wherever his byline appears. He is a one-man bridge between domestic and foreign issues, bound together with political insight. From the San Francisco Chronicle, he rose through the Posts’s ranks—from “city hall”—to foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London—to the Style section (the real heart of Washington politics!)—to twice-weekly columnist who starts our days off with wisdom. His regular commentary on cable and TV, with his trademark light touch that penetrates to an issue’s core, also informs, educates, inspires, as do his books—Coal to Cream, Last Dance in Havana, and Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America. A man of great good sense who lives his democratic values, Eugene Robinson helps us better to understand America, at home and abroad.”