Crossing the River Jordan Award

Previous Winners

The Honorable Walter Annenberg (1999)
Walter Annenberg was born in 1908, the son of an immigrant father who built a substantial publishing empire known as Triangle Publications. After unsuccessful efforts at a career in investments and business school, Walter entered the family business and turned his father’s company into an enormously successful corporation. Creator of popular magazines such as Seventeen and TV Guide, Annenberg prospered in the 1940s and 1950s, becoming an influential member of the nation’s business and political elite. In 1969, he was confirmed as the US Ambassador to the United Kingdom, and, in 1987, he sold Triangle Publications to Rupert Murdoch for $3.2 billion.

Walter Annenberg has used his fortune to support a wide range of causes and organizations. He has given substantial sums to public television and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He endowed journalism schools at both the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California. He made grants of as much as $50 million to organizations like the United Negro College Fund. And, in 1993, Walter Annenberg made the single most generous contribution to public education in the history of the United States, pledging half a billion dollars to improve public schools in urban and rural school systems throughout the country.

The public-private partnerships created by the Annenberg Challenge raised an additional $550 million to match the Ambassador’s gift, and have already supported substantial reforms in schools throughout the country. Unique collaborations between local governments, schools, businesses, and the nonprofit sector created to manage these efforts have led to increased community involvement and cooperation. Local education funds in Boston, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia have been at the forefront of several Annenberg initiatives.

For his generosity to the nation’s most disadvantaged public schools, and for the collaborative relationships his gift has fostered, Public Education Network presented the Crossing the River Jordan Award to the Honorable Walter Annenberg. Gail Levin, Executive Director of the Annenberg Foundation, accepted the award on behalf of Ambassador Annenberg.