NYWIFT Blog

Marquita Pool-Eckert, a 1999 Muse Awards honoree, was a CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite producer when I joined that broadcast as a production secretary in 1978. I was totally intimidated by her role on that fabled news program, but she treated me as an equal. That’s says so much about her.

So, imagine my delight when I joined NYWIFT in 2011 and saw the picture of Pool-Eckert holding her Muse Award (shown above).

When she was honored by NYWIFT, the Chicago native was the “ideas producer” at CBS Sunday Morning, drowning in mail full of story pitches—which is how a gray envelope from NYWIFT got lost in the pile. It took a phone call from NYWIFT Executive Director Terry Lawler before Pool-Eckert realized that she was getting an award. She says it’s one of the awards of which she is most proud—and that’s from a 12-time news Emmy winner!

Post-CBS News, she continues to influence young, would-be journalists, teaching at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and at Macaulay Honors College on the Hunter College campus.

Pool-Eckert—who holds a masters from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and is a Peabody Awards board member—joined NYWIFT in the early ‘90s. She says she hopes to be a lifelong member.

“There is a camaraderie between people who have been involved in NYWIFT,” she says. “Even if you don’t know them well, there is an immediate connection.”

Order your tickets for the 2013 Muse Awards on December 12. 

— MIMI SPILLANE