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Press
Releases
07/27/2005
AP tsunami coverage wins deadline reporting
and news photography awards from APME
NEW YORK (AP) _ Heart-rending news accounts and photographs
that helped bring the world's attention to the horrors of
the Asian tsunami are being honored by the Associated Press
Managing Editors association in its annual awards to AP staff.
Stories from scores
of reporters who scrambled throughout the region in the first
24 hours of the rapidly unfolding story last December received
APME's top award for deadline reporting. Images captured by
17 photographers of huge waves pounding shoreline villages
and widespread destruction and personal grief took the news
photography award.
Antonio Castaneda, in his first news posting with AP, was
named the John L. Dougherty Award winner for his reporting
under demanding conditions in Iraq. The award is given to
a staffer with less than three years' journalism experience
with the AP and less than five years' total news experience.
Paisley Dodds, then-AP's Caribbean news editor and now London
bureau chief, won the enterprise reporting award for exclusive
stories about controversial practices at the secretive U.S.
detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Angie Wagner, a Western regional writer based on Las Vegas,
received the feature writing award for her story about the
touching bond between a 13-year-old Iraqi informant and a
U.S. military unit.
Mark Scolforo, a newsman in Harrisburg, Pa., received the
Charles Rowe Award for distinguished state reporting for planning
and coordinating a state Freedom of Information audit in Pennsylvania.
The feature photography award went to Charles Krupa of Boston
for an image of the crowd reacting and ducking for cover as
a shattered bat flies into the stands during a spring training
baseball game between the Florida Marlins and Minnesota Twins.
APME, an association of editors at 1,500 AP member newspapers
in the U.S. and the Canadian Press in Canada, annually recognizes
top performance by AP reporters, editors and photographers.
This year's winners were selected during a meeting of the
association's board of directors that concluded Monday in
New York. The awards will be presented during the APME conference
Oct. 26-29 in San Jose, Calif.
In honoring the tsunami coverage, the judges cited the enormous
complexity and difficulty of providing a comprehensive, in-depth
picture of a disaster whose scope multiplied by the hour.
Reflecting the tsunami's wide swath, the deadline reporting
and news photography awards were presented to teams of reporters,
editors and photographers throughout Southeast and South Asia
and around the world as the story broke.
AP's coverage began when Asia Desk morning editor Andrea Thomas
felt a tremor in Bangkok, Thailand, filed an alert and phoned
bureaus around the region to check it out. As the severity
of the earthquake became apparent, followed by the huge, destructive
waves battering coastline villages and cities in a wide area,
the story quickly grew to include many bureaus around the
world.
"The stories and sidebars swelled with incredible numbers
and horrific details that truly captured the scope of this
enormous natural disaster," the judges in the deadline
reporting category said. "The writing was clean, clear
and descriptive, and the reporting from country to country
displayed what makes AP the best news source in the world."
While the work of many, the nomination singled out the efforts
of Jakarta correspondent Lely Djuhari, Sri Lanka Chief of
Bureau Dilip Ganguly, Singapore Chief of Bureau Chris Torchia,
Thailand reporter Sutin Wannabovorn and Malaysia Chief of
Bureau Vijay Joshi.
In picking images from 17 photographers for the news photography
award, the judges said the vastness of the tsunami was difficult
to comprehend. "AP's extensive photo coverage made the
enormity of the story tragically real to people around the
word. The photos stir a strong emotional response to the destruction,
loss and grief," they said.
Photographers cited in the award were Achmad Ibrahim, Suzanne
Plunkett, Irwin Fedriansyah and Dita Alangkara, Jakarta; Gemunu
Amarasinghe in Colombo, Sri Lanka; Elizabeth Dalziel, Beijing;
Peter Dejong, Amsterdam; Eugene Hoshiko, Shanghai; Jasper
Juinen, Madrid; M. Lakshman, Madras; David Longstreath, Bangkok;
Bullit Marquez, Manila; Saurabh Das, Gurinder Osan, Manish
Swarup and Gautam Singh, New Delhi; and Vincent Thian, Kuala
Lumpur.
Castaneda, a former administrative assistant on AP's International
Desk in New York, has been in Iraq less than a year but has
managed to produce numerous news and feature stories from
the war-torn country.
Wagner was cited for a feature story "A Soldier's Promise"
that explored the emotional connections between Steve-O, a
young Iraqi informant, and the Fort Carson, Colo.-based Dragon
Company, 1st Squadron, 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment. Despite
initial reluctance by the unit to talk, Wagner persisted and
finally was invited to come to Fort Carson when the boy was
brought to the United States.
In a project requiring four months of legwork and reporting,
Scolforo planned and coordinated a state FOI audit involving
52 news organizations in Pennsylvania. The results appeared
as a weeklong series that dominated front pages across the
state and was reprinted in a 16-page brochure.
The judges also cited the following work for honorable mention:
Deadline Reporting:
-- Hurricane Ivan coverage: Staff.
-- Uzbekistan Revolt:
Bagila Bukharbayeva, Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Enterprise Reporting:
-- Global Warming: Special Correspondent Charles Hanley, New
York.
Feature Writing:
-- A Decision About Death: National Writer Pauline Arrillaga,
Phoenix.
-- Ryan's Shot: Sports Columnist Tim Dahlberg, Las Vegas.
Dougherty Award:
-- Matt Sedensky, Kansas City, Mo.
-- Kristen Gelineau, Richmond, Va.
Rowe Award:
-- Inmate Welfare: Kim Curtis, Bob Porterfield, San Francisco.
-- Eric Rudolph and Richard Scrushy cases: Jay Reeves, Birmingham,
Ala.
News Photography:
-- Iraq staff: Mohammed Adnan, Nabil Al Jurani, David Guttenfelder,
Bilal Hussein, Karim Kadim, Jim MacMillan, Hadi Mizban, Samir
Mizban, Khalid Mohammed, Anja Niedringhaus, Jacob Silberberg,
Mohammed Uraibi.
-- Philippines fire: Aaron Favila, Manila.
Feature Photography:
-- Olympic table tennis: Chitose Suzuki, Boston.
-- President Bush and unwieldy umbrella: Charles Dharapak,
Washington.
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On the Net:
http://www.apme.com
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