Bob Dotson, the NBC News correspondent whose long-running series “The American Story with Bob Dotson” is a regular feature on “Today,” will receive the 2015 William Allen White Foundation National Citation on April 23 at The University of Kansas in Lawrence.
Dotson, a 1968 graduate of the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications, tells stories of “ordinary people doing extraordinary things,” such as veterans who honor their fallen comrades every week by washing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., a high school janitor who didn’t want to give up the job he loved even after winning a $3 million lottery prize or a teacher who is spending her retirement seeing the country, traveling 18,000 miles with only her horses and dog.
Dotson will accept the citation and give the William Allen White Day public lecture during the annual ceremony at 4 p.m. April 23 in Woodruff Auditorium at the Kansas Union. The event is free and open to the public; a reception and book signing will follow. His book, “American Story, a Lifetime Search for Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things,” is a New York Times best-seller.
Dotson began his broadcasting career at the NBC station in Oklahoma City, WKY-TV (now KFOR-TV), where he was director of special projects. He joined NBC News in 1975 as a reporter at WKYC-TV, the NBC television station in Cleveland. Two years later, he opened NBC’s first news bureau in Dallas, from which he covered Central America. In 1979, he moved to the NBC News bureau in Atlanta. In addition to his “Today” and “NBC Nightly News” assignments, he also worked on several NBC News magazine programs.
Dotson has received more than 100 awards for his work in broadcast journalism, including eight National Emmys and 11 nominations. The Radio Television Digital News Association has honored Dotson with a record five Edward R. Murrow Awards, and the Society of Professional Journalists cited him three times for Best Network Television News Series.
The William Allen White Foundation trustees chose Dotson to receive the citation, which has been presented annually since 1950. Other recipients include Cokie Roberts, Leonard Pitts Jr., Paul Steiger, Gerald F. Seib, Candy Crowley, Seymour Hersh, John Carroll, Walter Cronkite, Arthur O. Sulzberger, Helen Thomas, Charles Kuralt, Bernard Shaw, Bob Woodward, Molly Ivins and Gordon Parks.