Knight-Bagehot Fellows Class of 2001 are: Back: from left: Haris Anwar, Brian O'Connor, Barry Henderson, Ward Lassoe, Tim Gray, Jeff Sommer. Front: from left: Grainne McCarthy, Leslie Moore, Terri Thompson (program director), Teresa Tritch, Rachel Beck.

Three outstanding journalists have won Columbia University's "Best of Knight-Bagehot" Business Journalism Award for the best work produced by a former Knight-Bagehot Fellow between July 1, 1999, and June 30, 2000. The awards were presented November 13, 2000, at the 25th anniversary dinner celebration of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism held at the Sheraton New York in midtown Manhattan. For more news about the new book Writing About Business, marking the program's 25th Anniversary, click here. The award winners are Stephen H. Dunphy, '76, for daily beat reporting, Leah Beth Ward, '88, for investigative reporting; and Peter Kibiriti, '97, for publishing and editing.

Conferred this year by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for the fifth time, the "Best of Knight-Bagehot" is awarded to the story or series by a former Fellow that best reflects business and financial sophistication as well as traditional journalistic skills of thorough reporting, good storytelling and timeliness (including deadline and competitive issues).

A distinguished panel of business journalists selected Stephen Dunphy, business columnist for the Seattle Times who logs nearly 240 bylines a year, for his ability to take a murky, arcane topic such as economics and produce riveting stories with crystalline clarity. The judges also selected Leah Beth Ward, a technology reporter for the Dallas Morning News, for an investigative story she wrote for her former employer, the Charlotte Observer. In the grand tradition of the hard-hitting expose, her story, "Desperate Harvest," reported the abuses and exploitation of imported farm workers in North Carolina. Finally, the judges honored Peter Kibiriti for launching EnterpriseAfrica, an English-language magazine in Africa on investment and entrepreneurship.

In presenting the awards, Chris Welles, a former director of the Knight-Bagehot Program, said: "Interestingly, the winners could not be more different. They reflect core journalistic disciplines: investigative reporting, daily beat reporting and publishing/editing."

A mid-career study program, the Bagehot Fellowship was founded in 1975 by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism to address the problem of deficiencies in business news coverage. Originally named in honor of Walter Bagehot (pronounced ba-jet), the 19th century economist and editor of The Economist, it was renamed the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in 1987 in recognition of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's $3 million gift as an endowment for the program. As many as ten professional journalists are selected each year to study for two semesters at Columbia's schools of business, law, international affairs and journalism. Fellows receive full tuition and a living-expenses stipend. During the past 25 years, 214 journalists have participated in this rigorous program, and many now hold key positions in newsrooms around the world.

This year's Knight-Bagehot Fellows, who started their nine months at Columbia in August, are listed below.

• Khawaja Haris Anwar reports for Dawn Newspaper, the leading newspaper in Pakistan, on a variety of business topics, including finance, economics, information technology and management trends.
• Rachel Beck is national retail/internet reporter for the Associated Press, where she also reports on financial markets, monthly economic reports and corporate earnings.
• Tim Gray writes for Business North Carolina magazine from his home in Durham, N.C.
• Barry Henderson is a staff writer for Barron's.
• Ward V.B. Lassoe is a segment producer for the show "Business Center" on CNBC.
• Grainne McCarthy is Jakarta bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires.
• Leslie Moore is a Mexico correspondent for Dow Jones' America Economia.
• Brian J. O'Connor is managing editor of Bankrate.com, a leading online personal finance news service based in North Palm Beach, Fl.
• Jeff Sommer is assistant business editor at The New York Times, responsible for domestic business correspondents.
• Teresa Tritch became senior editor at Money magazine in 1997, after spending three years as the magazine's Washington, D.C. bureau chief and five years as a reporter/staff writer covering virtually all personal finance topics.

The Director Terri Thompson became director of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in June, 1993. In her 20 years as a business journalist, she has reported, written and/or edited for the Coralville (Iowa) Courier, Purchasing Magazine, Business Week, Institutional Investor, U.S. News & World Report and Lear's. A graduate of New York University and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a 1981 Bagehot Fellow at Columbia, she is the author of Biz Kids' Guide to Success: Money-Making Ideas for Young Entrepreneurs (Barron's, 1992) and editor of Writing About Business: The New Columbia Knight-Bagehot Guide to Economics and Business Journalism (Columbia University Press, 2001). Thompson has received numerous awards for her work as a financial reporter. She is a former president of the New York Financial Writers' Association.

Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism is now accepting applications for Knight-Bagehot Fellowships for the 2001-2002 academic year. The deadline for applications is March 1, 2001. For further information, contact program director Terri Thompson, at Columbia University, 2950 Broadway, Mail Code 3850, New York, N.Y. 10027 or by e-mail at tat5@columbia.edu.