Bob Woodward named Washingtonian of the Year

by Olafimihan Oshin - 12/22/22 10:16 AM ET

2019 PEN literary service award recipient Bob Woodward attends the PEN America Literary Gala at the American Museum of Natural History on Tuesday, May 21, 2019, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Bob Woodward, one of the two Post journalists that famously broke the Watergate scandal, has been named one of the Washingtonians of the year.

The longtime journalist was one of eleven city residents local magazine Washingtonian awarded the yearly honor.

Woodward received the honor from the magazine for his more than fifty years of work as an investigative journalist for the Post, during which he produced over 21 books and received two Pulitzer Prizes for his reporting on the Watergate scandal and September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Washingtonian also noted Woodward’s recent works on former President Trump and his administration, including his 2020 book “Rage,” an in-depth look into Trump’s tumultuous presidency, and “The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump,” which was released in October, where he detailed eight hours worth of conversations with the former president, including 20 one-on-one interviews with Trump.

“It’s a small town,” the 79-year-old journalist told the magazine. “But it’s the anything-that-can-happen town.”

Woodward also told the magazine that “Journalists are bad at the future. Really good journalism is when somebody takes a hard subject and says, ‘What really happened? Let’s dig it out.’ And that means going back.”

The latest honor comes after Woodward said in a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview in October that he still believes Trump is “dangerous” and “a threat to democracy,” adding that he wasn’t the right man to handle the position of president.

“Trump was the wrong man for the job,” Woodward told CBS News anchor John Dickerson in the interview. “I realize now, two years later, all of the January 6 insurrection, leads me to the conclusion that he’s not just the wrong man for the job, but he’s dangerous, and he is a threat to democracy, and he’s a threat to the presidency, because he doesn’t understand the core obligations that come with that office.”

Other notable D.C. residents who received the annual honor included Washington Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle, Children’s National President and CEO Kurt Newman and DC College Access Program former president and CEO Argelia Rodriguez.