Journalist Shields shares civility award

Journalist Mark Shields, a Weymouth native, is the co-recipient of a Pennsylvania college’s first prize for civility in public life. Allegheny College yesterday gave its inaugural award to both Shields and columnist David Brooks of The New York Times during a ceremony at the National Press Club in Washington. “The Allegheny College Prize for Civility in Public Life each year will honor two winners, one from each side of the ideological spectrum, who show noteworthy civility while continuing to fight passionately for their beliefs,’’ the school said in a statement. The program is the brainchild of Allegheny’s president, James H. Mullen Jr., a former executive vice president at Middlesex Community College in Lowell and senior vice president at Trinity College in Hartford. Shields, 74, was born and raised on the South Shore before heading off to the University of Notre Dame. Among other things, he worked for R obert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign and managed the successful 1975 reelection campaign of the late Boston Mayor Kevin H. White. Shields and Brooks spar weekly on the PBS “Newshour.’’