Published Friday, April 6, 2001
Award winners offer ingredients for excellence
BY JOHNNY LEWIS
ASNE Reporter
ASNE will present awards to seven individuals or teams for outstanding examples of writing and photography at its closing session on Friday.
The Jesse Laventhol Prizes are given to recognize outstanding reporting on deadline. Two winners will be awarded $10,000 each.
The ASNE Foundation also is awarding four prizes for outstanding writing and one for distinguished community service photojournalism. Each winner will receive $2,500.
Some of the winners talked about the process involved in producing top quality journalism:
Stephen Erlanger, based in Prague, Czech Republic, for The New York Times, won the Laventhol Award for stories on the Kolubara coalmine strikes. The strikes led to a Yugoslav uprising that forced Slobodan Milosevic from power. Mr. Erlanger said a good story should have drama, surprise and impact. “I think impact comes from detail and good quotes,” he said, adding that he does not follow the pyramid structure of story writing. “I try to write stories that cannot be lopped off at the bottom, he said. “I try to bring narrative techniques into my stories.”
The
other Laventhol prize, for deadline reporting by a team,
went to 20 journalists from The Star-Ledger, Newark, N.J.,
for coverage of a fire that took the lives of three students
at a Seton Hall University dormitory in South Orange, N.J.
The Star-Ledger team: Russell Ben-Ali, Robert Braun, Carol
Ann Campbell, Steve Chambers, David Cho, Kate Coscarelli,
Sue Epstein, Robin Gaby Fisher, William Gannon, David Gibson,
Rebecca Goldsmith, Kelly Heyboer, Rudy Larini, John Mooney,
Mark Mueller, Mary Jo Patterson, Matt Reilly, Ted Sherman,
Guy Sterling and Angela Stewart.
Columnist
Leonard Pitts Jr. of The Miami Herald won the ASNE award
for commentary. He says that perfection is an unattainable
goal for a writer. “If you’re easy to please,
you stop trying,” Mr. Pitts said. “If you show
me any of my columns, I’ll say ‘I wish I’d
done this, I wish I could’ve done that.’ The idea
is not to be good enough but better than good enough.”
Mr. Pitts also said he tries to make his columns unpredictable.
“I try to zig when they zag,” he said. “I
try to avoid obvious retorts to save the reader his 34 cents.”
Stephen
Henderson of The Sun, Baltimore, won the award for editorial
writing.
Stephen
Magagnini of The Sacramento Bee won the award for diversity
writing for an examination of the Hmong community in Sacramento.
He said persistence was key to getting to know the people
of an unfamiliar culture. “I went to their homes six,
seven, eight times,” Mr. Magagnini said. With each
visit he learned something new. “The layers of the
onion peeled back.” He said every good story about
race needs one of three elements: humor, surprise or overcoming
adversity.
Tom
Hallman of The Oregonian in Portland was honored for nondeadline
writing for the second time. He was recognized for telling
the story of a 14-year-old boy who put his life on the line
to undergo surgery that would make him look more “normal.”
Mr. Hallman also was honored in 1997.
John
Beale of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette won the inaugural award
in community service photojournalism for a series that depicted
the rich diversity of religious faith in the Pittsburgh
area. Mr. Beale, who was a reporter before he switched to
photography, said he sees himself as a reporter with a camera.
He said that allowing photographers to pursue stories that
they conceive can strengthen a newspaper. “I work in
an environment that empowers people to pursue their own
ideas,” he said. “It’s a breath of fresh
air to have an opportunity to work on something you’re
passionate about.”
