Jerry Seib credits the Kansas University “journalism fraternity” with helping him land nearly every newspaper job he’s had during his career.

That’s why Seib — now the Washington bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal — said he was especially excited to be named recipient of this year’s William Allen White Citation, given annually by the William Allen White Foundation in conjunction with the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at KU.

“It’s humbling because there’s a lot of big names on the list,” he said in a phone interview. “There’s nobody who’s ever gotten it who appreciates it more than me. To come from KU and to go back to KU is really nice and special. It means a lot.”

Seib will receive the award during a ceremony at 1:30 p.m. Friday at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. He then will deliver a lecture, “Journalism: In Transition or in Peril?”

Past winners of the award include Bob Woodward, Cokie Roberts and Bill Kurtis. The award is named for White, the nationally known editor of the Emporia Gazette during the early 20th century.

“(Seib) is a journalist who’s had an outstanding career,” said Ann Charles, who chairs the William Allen White Foundation board of directors. “He’s a highly respected journalist, and obviously we’re excited to have him come home.”

Seib, a native of Hays, graduated from the journalism school in 1978. He has been Washington bureau chief since 2002 and manages a staff of 40. He also writes the paper’s “Capital Journal” column periodically and is a regular commentator on the cable news network CNBC.

He’s worked at the Wall Street Journal since 1978. In addition to working in Washington, he has reported in Dallas and in Cairo, Egypt, covering the Middle East.

Seib and his wife, Barbara Rosewicz, have three children. Rosewicz, also a KU journalism graduate, is managing editor of stateline.org, a news Web site.

Job difficulties

Seib said life sometimes was difficult for his reporters during the first term of President George W. Bush. Recent interviews by Bush and other developments have him wondering what to expect in the second term.

“The first Bush term was kind of tough to cover,” Seib said. “This hasn’t been an administration or White House that’s easy to extract information from. But since the election, the Bush White House has seemed to open up some. I think we’re wondering which version of the Bush administration we are going to be living with.”

No matter how difficult Seib finds the White House, it likely won’t amount to the problems he faced in 1987 while in Iran. That’s when he was taken prisoner by officials there and accused of being a spy for Israel. He was released four days later without explanation.

He and his wife, who were both writing for the Journal from Cairo, were reassigned to Washington shortly after the incident.

“Once you’ve been labeled a spy for Israel in the Middle East, there is a certain amount of people who want to hunt you down,” he said. “There was probably some residual danger, so we didn’t linger too much after that.”

Seib said he sometimes missed being in the Middle East but now enjoys family life in Washington.

Analytic approach

Seib says his goal at the Journal is to provide in-depth stories that other daily newspapers don’t.

Seib was part of the team that won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. His bureau also helped bring the Abu Ghraib prison scandal to national prominence after receiving documents from the Red Cross showing authorities were aware prison abuse was a problem.

“Our stories are slightly different,” he said. “The Journal tends to see itself as a second read. We’re not a metropolitan daily. We assume readers already know what President Bush said in the State of the Union address. We do things that move the story forward and make the analysis sharper.”