This Week In National Press Club History

March 4, 1997: Yasser Arafat, President of the Palestine National Authority, makes a second appearance at the National Press Club, this time at a morning Newsmaker. It is the first session to be carried live by the Club on the Internet, in addition to conventional broadcasting. Because it is a faster and more flexible venue, the Newsmaker program has attracted many front-page events over the years.

March 4, 2013: National Press Club President Angela Greiling Keane presents a plaque thanking the Washington Post for supplying historic newspaper mats and offset plates for the Club’s walls. The Post is the only newspaper that has both a mat and an offset plate of the same edition on the walls, reporting President Richard Nixon’s resignation.

March 7, 2001: Bernard Shaw, pioneer journalist and retiring news anchor for CNN, is interviewed on “The Kalb Report.” in the National Press Club’s Ballroom. “No journalist worth his or her salt wants to be taken by anybody…don’t take no for an answer,” he told Kalb. Now in its twentieth season, the Kalb Report, jointly produced by the NPC Journalism Institute, George Washington University, and other organizations, features discussions on the vital role of the press in our democracy and the transformation of journalism in the twenty-first century. Among the many distinguished journalists who have appeared on the program are recent Fourth Estate Award winners Jim Lehrer (2011), Bob Schieffer (2010), Christiane Amanpour (2008), and Tom Friedman (2009), who was featured in the program in February, 2014.

This Week In National Press Club History is presented by the History & Heritage Committee, which preserves and revitalizes the Club’s century-plus history with lobby displays, events, panel discussions and its oral history program.

For more information on the Committee’s activities, or to join it, contact Chair Gilbert Klein at [email protected].