Rebecca Blumenstein, president of editorial for NBC News, will receive the 2025 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, the professional association of business journalists.
The award, the organization’s highest honor, recognizes an individual who has made a significant impact on the field of business journalism and who has been a nurturing influence on others in the profession.
“We are thrilled to be bestowing this honor on such a worthy recipient as Rebecca Blumenstein,” said James Nelson, the president of SABEW and business editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, in a statement. “She has been an inspiration and mentor to so many journalists, and her dedication to the ideals of our profession is unwavering.”
Since 2023, Blumenstein has overseen NBC News’s editorial teams, newsgathering, field operations, “Meet the Press,” “Dateline” and much more. Her career also includes senior roles at The New York Times, where she was a deputy managing editor, and at The Wall Street Journal, where she was deputy editor in chief.
Blumenstein started in journalism at the Tampa Tribune, Gannett Newspapers and Newsday. She moved to the Journal in 1995, covering General Motors. In 2007, as Beijing bureau chief, she led a team of China correspondents that won a Pulitzer Prize.
Since joining NBC News, she has strengthened editorial collaboration across the network’s broadcast, digital and streaming platforms, as well as with NBCU local stations and Noticias Telemundo. Last year, NBC News attracted the largest audience among news organizations, reaching nearly 140 million Americans monthly across television, streaming and digital, according to Comscore Xmedia, and internal NBC analytics show the network broke its own record for scoops and first-to-reports. In February, NBC News won a George Polk award for an investigative series that revealed how unclaimed bodies were dissected and leased out for medical research.
“It’s important that you take what you read and consume seriously,” Blumenstein said in a commencement speech at the University of Michigan in December. “There’s a reason why the First Amendment came first. It wasn’t just about protecting a free and independent press. It’s also about a free and independent population engaging with that information.”
Blumenstein will be formally honored during SABEW’s annual conference on April 3 in Arlington, Virginia. Dean Murphy, senior editor for enterprise at The New York Times, will lead a discussion with Blumenstein about her success in navigating a cross-platform career and her insights about business journalism in the years ahead.
