A Bigger Celebration Reaching a Wider Audience!
Rochester, NY – How do you reimagine one of Rochester’s longest running birthday parties? This year, the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House realized the traditional model for the annual Susan B. Anthony Birthday celebration (1,200 supporters and friends joining together for a program and meal) wasn’t going to be possible or safe, given the pandemic.
In a break with tradition, the Anthony Museum has made plans to safely share Susan B. Anthony’s birthday celebration with their biggest audience ever through a televised broadcast. The “Gala” will be a 1/2 hour program on WROC-TV at 7pm on Wednesday, February 10, and will also be streamed on the internet. An inspiring program is planned that will be memorable and entertaining. As in other years, it will also serve as the major fundraising event for the Anthony Museum.
The keynote speaker will be Susan Zirinsky, acclaimed journalist and groundbreaking producer, now president and senior executive producer of CBS News. Her nickname in the newsroom is “Z.” Like Anthony, she is described as “legendary” and “trailblazing.”
Zirinsky recently received the National Press Club’s highest honor, the Fourth Estate Award. “Susan Zirinsky is the personification of journalistic perseverance, tenacity, and integrity,” Club President Michael Freedman said. “Like the best of those before her at the network of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, Susan leads by example, displaying the courage of her convictions and making a positive difference—at CBS News and throughout the profession. She is a role model not only for women but for everyone who is dedicated to journalistic ethics and excellence. We are proud to honor her achievements—and that’s the way it is.”
The theme of the 2021 Susan B. Anthony Birthday Gala is A 2 Z, saluting the intersection between Susan B. Anthony as a public relations maven, author, and newspaper editor, and Susan Zirinsky, broadcast media icon. In her biography of Anthony, broadcast journalist and author Lynn Sherr noted: “Acutely aware of the power of the printed word, [Susan B. Anthony] was a one-woman press phenomenon, utilizing every aspect of the media that existed—daily newspapers, monthly magazines, women’s journals—to promote The Cause with impressive skill.”*
These two women understand the power and influence of the press. They never let a glass ceiling limit their work, their ascendance, or their impact as they open the world for others.
Questions related to the 2021 Susan B. Anthony Birthday Gala may be directed to pr@susanb.org. For sponsorship opportunities both before and during the broadcast event, please call 585.249.7490, x 712.
*Lynn Sherr, Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words, © 1995, Random House.
