photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Lester Holt is pictured at KU campus on Thursday, April 10, 2025.

Reporters know how to interview, research and write — but these days, they also have to learn how to fight.

That’s what lauded NBC News journalist Lester Holt told a ballroom full of newspeople on Thursday while accepting the 2025 William Allen White Foundation National Citation at the University of Kansas. Holt said that in a time of unprecedented attacks on the press, it’s more important than ever for journalists to stand up for their profession and the truth.

“Journalism as we know it is in a fight for its life from inside and outside, and that should worry journalists and nonjournalists alike,” Holt said. “A world without a healthy press is a world where the important questions are not asked or answered or the powerful operate unchallenged.”

The U.S. is seeing more and more government retaliation against the press, Holt said, as well as a sustained campaign to erase facts and history. What’s also happening is a strategy to “blame the messengers as an answer to uncomfortable truths,” he said.

photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Lester Holt speaks at the Kansas Union Ballroom on Thursday, April 10, 2025.

But Holt also said that journalists have always risen to the challenge before, and that many of the people with him in the Kansas Union ballroom would be called to do so again. He recalled the many other outstanding journalists who had earned the same recognition from the William Allen White Foundation since 1950, a year after the Kansas Board of Regents established the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications at KU.

One thing that Holt said he had in common with the school’s namesake, Emporia’s William Allen White, is that he didn’t have a college degree in journalism.

“To be clear, I would have welcomed the opportunity to attend a journalism program of this caliber and prestige had my life not gone in some unexpected directions,” Holt said.

Holt ended up dropping out of college to cover the police beat in San Francisco on the CBS radio station, and he became a general assignment reporter at a CBS TV station in New York City when he was 22. Some of the best advice he received early in his career was “to be ready for doors to open and be ready to walk through them.”

“I never understood what that meant until, lo and behold, doors started to open, eventually leading me to this point in my life,” Holt said. “I stand here at the pinnacle of my profession, but I’m also the product of strong mentors.”

It has indeed been an illustrious career for Holt, who has been a key part of numerous news programs since joining NBC News in 2000. He has been the principal anchor of “Dateline NBC” since September 2011, and in June 2015 he became the anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” a program that has been on the air for over 75 years. He also spent eight years anchoring the weekend editions and 12 years co-anchoring “Weekend Today,” and in 2020, he launched the award-winning digital newscast “Nightly News: Kids Edition.”

Just last year alone, Holt anchored NBC’s primetime coverage of the 2024 presidential election and conducted exclusive interviews with a number of big names, including then-President Joe Biden, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the families of American hostages in Gaza and the CEO of Microsoft. He was also named the “most trusted television news personality in America” by the Hollywood/Morning Consult poll last year.

Holt — who has received multiple Emmy Awards, the National Press Club’s Fourth Estate Award and the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award — told the crowd at KU that journalism honors like the William Allen White citation demonstrate that journalism’s mission is still alive. They highlight those who exemplify the field’s values, and, most importantly, they remind the public that what journalists do matters.

“Our strength as an industry, as a profession, is in finding the answers,” Holt said. “Let that be our rally cry as we rise from that defensive crouch and hold truth to power.”

photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Lester Holt (left) accepts the William Allen White Foundation National Citation from Eric Nelson, chair of the William Allen White Foundation (right).