Celebrating the George Polk Awards

04/16/2023

Stanford University freshman Theo Baker of The Stanford Daily has received a Special George Polk Award for uncovering allegations that pioneering research co-authored by Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a renowned neuroscientist, was supported in part by manipulated imagery and that Tessier-Lavigne and his associates failed to avail themselves of opportunities to correct the record. Baker’s reporting (bit.ly/3KGk8DR) spurred the university to engage an outside counsel who has assembled a panel of experts to investigate the allegations. Accepting the award at the luncheon, Baker said, “The last few months have been a real crash course in journalism. I’ve had doors slammed in my face and hung up on too many times to count, yelled at, had high-powered lawyers threaten me, and had anonymous letters show up on my doorstep. I’ve even been in a car chase. Well, I was on a bike. After all of this, I just have one question. How the hell do you guys do this for a living?”
Polk curator John Darnton said that the “Special Award is given in an unusual situation in which we want to honor a reporter who exhibits steadfastness and bravery and whose work does not fall into a typical category.” Special Polk Award recipients include columnist David Ignatius and editor Karen Attiah of The Washington Post for Jamal Khashoggi’s Final Appeal (bit.ly/3mFoP8I), an opinion article chronicling the work and brutal murder of Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Upon accepting the 2019 award (https://vimeo.com/328759930), Attiah said, “We owe it to Jamal to fight for human life and dignity from Yemen to Syria to Ferguson to Flint.” In 2020, a Special Polk Award was given to Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times and contributors for the 1619 Project (bit.ly/3A3nNGU), a supplement published on the 400th anniversary of the advent of American slavery. Hannah-Jones accepted the award virtually (bit.ly/3UBObRH) due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Long Island University announced the winners of the George Polk Awards in February 2023 for reporting in 2022. The annual awards luncheon was held at the New York Athletic Club on Friday, April 14. The George Polk Awards are conferred annually to honor special achievements in journalism. Winners are chosen from newspapers, magazines, television, radio, and online news organizations. Judges place a premium on original investigative work that requires digging and resourcefulness and brings results. For information about the other 14 winners, see https://liu.edu/polk.

04/16/2023

Long Island University (LIU) has announced the George Polk Awards in Journalism winners, honoring journalists in 15 categories for their reporting in 2021.

Award winners span a wide range of revelatory news coverage, including the plot behind a Haitian assassination, the impact of a Madagascar climate disaster, the depth of American political upheaval, the consequences of corporate subterfuge, the victimization of brain-damaged children and factory workers in Florida, and the exploitation of migrants here and abroad. They were selected from a record total of 610 submissions of work that appeared in print, online, on television, or on radio and were nominated by news organizations, individuals, or a national panel of advisors.

“Not only did we receive a record number of submissions, but they came from far more sources of investigative reporting than ever before, and dozens in addition to the award winners represented first-class work,” said John Darnton, curator of the awards. “This speaks to the vitality and continued promise of a changing journalism landscape and is reason to feel optimistic about the future of our craft.”

This is "George Polk Awards Intro Video" by Melvin MCCRAY on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

05/09/2020

The George Polk Award for Local Reporting goes to Brian M. Rosenthal of The New York Times for unearthing a pernicious scheme by unscrupulous lenders to drive up the price of taxi medallions and turn huge profits by selling them to unsophisticated cab drivers with loans they could never repay, leading borrowers into financial ruin so devastating at least nine committed su***de.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/nyregion/nyc-taxis-medallions-su***des.html

http://www.melvinmccrayiii.com/work #/georgepolk/

https://www.facebook.com/Celebrating-the-George-Polk-Awards-101340831580829/?modal=admin_todo_tour

Thousands of immigrants who were chasing the dream of owning a New York taxi were trapped in reckless loans by bankers who made huge profits, The Times found.

05/09/2020

The George Polk Award for Local Reporting goes to Brian M. Rosenthal of The New York Times for unearthing a pernicious scheme by unscrupulous lenders to drive up the price of taxi medallions and turn huge profits by selling them to unsophisticated cab drivers with loans they could never repay, leading borrowers into financial ruin so devastating at least nine committed su***de. On May 4, Rosenthal won a Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting for the series.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/nyregion/nyc-taxis-medallions-su***des.html

05/09/2020

05/09/2020

If Latin America and the Caribbean are home to just 8% of the world’s population, why do they have 38% of the world’s murders? Why Latin America the most homicidal region on earth? NYTimes reporter Azam Ahmed tells the chilling stories of the victims in his dispatches from Latin America that won him the George Polk Award in Foreign Reporting. “It feels strange to win an award writing about the suffering of others,” said Ahmed. “I hope more than anything that this award can bring more attention to their plight” https://youtu.be/bodryG_xD6g. For the other winners see https://bit.ly/3ciG0m3.

05/07/2020

Nikole Hannah-Jones said that she cried in the newsroom last summer when she saw the 1619 Project spread out for the first time. “I became overcome with emotion and just broke down in sobs,” she said. “I saw its beauty, I saw its power, and I saw its pain.” Hannah-Jones and the contributors to the New York Times Magazine Supplement redefined the centrality of slavery to the development of America. For their efforts, they won a Special George Polk Award. The Polk Awards luncheon was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, so she and the other winners delivered their acceptance speeches digitally. On Monday, Hannah-Jones added another accolade to her groundbreaking work by winning a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. For more on the George Polk Awards, see https://www.facebook.com/Celebrating-the-George-Polk-Awards-101340831580829/?modal=admin_todo_tour. Also, see the Best of the George Polk Awards website http://www.melvinmccrayiii.com/work #/georgepolk/ and YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/feed/my_videos.

05/05/2020

The winners of the 71st Annual George Polk Awards gave their acceptance speeches digitally because of the Coronavirus pandemic. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmemoMaE6JW9Sf8kWwCP7DlcVmNukSqyI

05/05/2020

The April 3rd, 2020 George Polk Awards Luncheon was canceled due to the Coronavirus pandemic. The winners shared their acceptance speeches virtually using cell phone video. https://vimeo.com/409192363

The video is introduced by Dr. Kimberly Kline, President of Long Island University and John Darnton, curator of the Polk Awards. For more on the Polk Awards see: http://www.melvinmccrayiii.com/work #/georgepolk/.

For over 71 years, LIU has been the proud home of the George Polk Awards, the first major award of its kind to recognize reporting across all media.
This prestigious honor focuses on the intrepid, bold, and influential work of the reporters themselves, placing a premium on investigative work that is original, resourceful, and thought-provoking. Among the many journalism greats who are Polk laureates are Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Christiane Amanpour, Peter Jennings, Norman Mailer, Diane Sawyer, Seymour Hersh, Glenn Greenwald, and many more.

Winners of the 2020 George Polk Awards in journalism tell how they got their stories. This year's luncheon was canceled due to the Coronavirus pandemic so the…