Columbia U. Honors Reporting on Race

By: E&P Staff Columbia University has announced the winners of the 2004 Let's Do It Better Awards for outstanding coverage of race and ethnicity in print and broadcast journalism. Elizabeth Llorente of The Record in Bergen, N.J., won a Career Achievement Award for print reporters marking her more than 10 years of race and demographics coverage.

"She is one of the first journalists in the nation to recognize the importance of the nation's changing demographics," said Arlene Morgan, program director of Let's Do It Better and assistant dean of continuing education for the Journalism School. Llorente also was cited for contributions she has made to teach other journalists, regardless of their race or ethnic background, about the cultural competency required to report on diverse communities.

Winners of the awards receive an honorarium and will present their work at the Let's Do It Better Workshop on Race and Ethnicity, a conference for professional journalists to be held June 1-12 at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York. The workshop, offered in conjunction with the awards, aims to promote multicultural sensitivity in newsrooms.

The Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal won the $1,000 Paul Tobenkin Award for outstanding achievement for newspaper reporting about race with an eight-part investigation on the wrongful conviction of Darryl Hunt. The award cites reporter Phoebe Zerwick and the paper for upholding the spirit of Paul Tobenkin, a reporter for the old New York Herald Tribune who died in 1959.

The Journal's series, which helped gain the release of Hunt and the subsequent arrest of Willard Brown for the 20-year-old murder of Deborah Sykes, "epitomizes the best that journalism has to offer. The Tobenkin is the highest award the school can bestow on a newspaper for the coverage of racial intolerance, hate crimes or discrimination," Morgan said.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Ft. Lauderdale earned a special leadership citation for its portfolio of work, including a two-year series of stories on the impact of AIDS/HIV and an in-depth look into the economic and environmental problems in Haiti.

"The Sun-Sentinel entry was a comprehensive portfolio, showing how a newspaper can integrate its daily report through columns, special projects and regular stories," said Morgan. "Editor Earl Maucker and his staff have shown remarkable commitment to covering their backyard which includes the horror of what is going on in Haiti and how that impacts the people who live in their region."

The Let's Do it Better 2004 Excellence Award winners in the print cetegory are:

1. The Dallas Morning News, Karen Thomas: "For a Moment, Family"
2. The Denver Post, Michael Riley: "A Grim Gamble"
3. South Florida Sun-Sentinel: Portfolio of Stories
4. Los Angeles Times, Team Report: "Green Card Marines"
5. The Orange County Register, Santa Ana, Calif., Anh Do, Teri Sforza, Cindy Yamanaka: "The Boy Monk"
6. The Oregonian, Portland, Angie Chuang: A Portfolio of Work
7. The Record, Elizabeth Llorente: "Diverse and Divided"
8. San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, Carolyn Jung: "The New Faces of Wine"
9. Star Tribune, Minneapolis, Gregory A. Patterson: "Heart and Soul"
10. The Wall Street Journal, Teri Agins: "A Fashion House with an Elite Aura Wrestles with Race"
11. The Wall Street Journal, Bryan Gruley: War Stories: "For Lt. Withers, Act of Kindness Has Unexpected Sequel"
12. The Winston-Salem Journal and Reporter Phoebe Zerwick, the Darryl Hunt Investigation, Paul Tobenkin Award