Newspaper Guild Banquet Honors the Best in Journalism

The Newspaper Guild-CWA celebrated the best in journalism Wednesday night at the annual Freedom Fund Award banquet, whose honorees included a BBC journalist who was held hostage in the Gaza Strip for four months and Washington Post reporters who exposed abusive conditions at Walter Reed Medical Center.

Alan Johnston, the former BBC Gaza correspondent, received the Herbert Block Freedom Award in recognition of his commitment to reporting in the face of grave personal danger.

The last Western reporter remaining in Gaza in March 2007, Johnston was abducted by Palestinian militants barely two weeks before he was supposed to leave. He spent 114 days in captivity, all of it taking a huge psychological and physical toll on him, and an emotional toll on his family. He was finally released on July 4, 2007.

The Herbert Block Award, which comes with a $5,000 check, is named for the famed Washington Post cartoonist – known as Herblock -- who died in 2001.  A Guild member for 67 years, Block left $50,000 to the international union. His gift funds the annual award for journalists who embody the true spirit of freedom of the press.

Dana Priest and Anne Hull of the Washington Post were awarded the 2007 Heywood Broun Award for their series on the abysmal conditions and bureaucratic failures that badly wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been forced to contend with at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C. The series also won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize.

The revelations about Walter Reed brought national outrage, spurred the resignation of the Secretary of the Army and senior hospital officials, and led to the creation of a bi-partisan commission to review the situation and improve it. The Broun award, named for the columnist who helped found the Guild, also comes with a $5,000 check.

The Broun judges – a six-member team of top American journalists who read 117 entries -- also gave awards of substantial distinction to print reporters Michael Riley of the Denver Post and Charles Duhigg of the New York Times. Riley uncovered massive failure by the federal judicial system to investigate and prosecute serious crime on U.S. Indian reservations and Duhigg reported on the financial exploitation of older Americans. Both received a $1,000 cash prize.

An honorable mention was awarded to Ray Ring of the High Country News for his investigation of the rising trend in accidents and deaths among oil and gas workers in six western states. Ring works in a one-person bureau 850 miles from his magazine's headquarters.

The banquet also honored some of the most promising young journalists, who received awards named for the late Guild attorney David S. Barr. High school student Sophie Cox of Atlanta won a $500 scholarship for her reporting on subsidized housing and the dire effects of cuts in federal funding. Titania Kumeh of San Francisco State University won a $1,500 scholarship for exposing the environmental crimes of Pacific Gas and Electric Company. A honorable mention went to Erin Rosa of Metro State College in Denver, whose three-part series on a federal prison probed labor issues, dangerous conditions and neglect.