Kenneth "Ken" Adlam Bode (1939-2022) papers

Director of the Center for Contemporary Media 1989-1998.

Ken Bode, the Eugene S. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Professor Journalism at DePauw University, served as an award-winning political analyst for PBS, CNN and NBC, covering every political campaign and presidential administration since 1976. This experience made him one of the most knowledgeable experts on the presidency and the men who have held the office.

Bode joined DePauw in 1989 as director of the University Center for Contemporary Media, and he directed DePauw’s media honors program, Media Fellows. While in that position, he was named WETA senior correspondent and moderator of Washington Week in Review, based in Washington, D.C. From 1994 to 1999, Bode was the host of the longest-running news program on PBS, and he served as anchor, moderator or commentator for WETA’s coverage of congressional hearings, and other special news events and documentaries for broadcast, locally and nationally.

Bode was serving DePauw as the John D. Hughes University Professor and director of the University’s Ubben Lecture Series when Northwestern University appointed him dean of its Medill School of Journalism in 1998. He returned to DePauw in 2003, and he writes a weekly column for The Indianapolis Star, Indiana’s largest daily newspaper.

In 1992 Bode covered the presidential election as a correspondent and analyst for CNN. During the primaries and national conventions, he was an analyst with Bernard Shaw and Judy Woodruff. He also moderated the South Dakota presidential primary debate and was a panelist for the New Hampshire debate. As part of CNN’s political series, Democracy in America, Bode reported and wrote two award-winning, hour-long documentaries; Bill Clinton of Arkansas, winner of the National Academy of Cable Programing’s Cable ACE award, and the Emmy Award-winning The Public Mind of George Bush. The series won the Joan Shorenstein Barone Award for Washington-based national affairs reporting.

From 1979 to 1989 Bode was a national political correspondent for NBC News in Washington, D.C. He appeared on all NBC news shows, including Nightly News, Today Show, and Meet the Press. His “Bode’s Journal” was regularly featured on the Today Show. Bode covered the presidential campaigns of 1980, 1984 and 1988 for NBC and was a floor correspondent at national conventions.

From 1975 to 1979 Bode was politics editor at The New Republic magazine, where he wrote articles and editorials, covered the 1976 presidential campaign and the Carter administration.

Articles by Bode have appeared in The Journal of Politics, American University Law Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The New Republic, TV Guide, Politics Today, The Columbia Journalism Review, Playboy and many other newspapers and publications.

Bode was a 1961 graduate of the University of South Dakota, where he was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate in philosophy and government. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in 1963 and 1966, respectively. He has taught at Michigan State University and the State University of New York at Binghamton. Bode was a post-doctoral fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University in 1978 and a Poynter Fellow in journalism at Yale University in 1989. He also was a senior adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute in Indianapolis.

Ken Bode passed away on June 2, 2022 in Charlotte, North Carolina at the age of 83.