Office of Public Affairs Columbia University New York, N.Y. 10027 (212) 854-5573
Four journalists from Mexico, Costa Rica and the United States have won Columbia University's 1996 Maria Moors Cabot Prizes for compassionate and courageous reporting on Latin American affairs.
The awards, for advancing press freedom and inter-American understanding, will be presented tonight (Thursday) in ceremonies on the Columbia campus to:
The awards, in their 58th year and the oldest in international journalism, are administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. They will be presented in formal ceremonies at 8:15 P.M. in the Rotunda of Low Memorial Library on the University's Morningside Heights campus in New York City. Journalism Dean Joan Konner will present the winners to University President George Rupp, who will confer the prizes. Each will receive a Cabot gold medal and a $1,000 honorarium.
The Cabot Prizes have been awarded annually by Columbia since 1939 to journalists of the Western Hemisphere for distinguished contributions to inter- American understanding and freedom of information. They were established by the late Godfrey Lowell Cabot of Boston as a memorial to his wife. With this year's awards, 214 prizes and 46 special citations will have been conferred on journalists from 31 countries.
The prizes are awarded by the Trustees of Columbia on the recommendation of the dean of the Journalism School. An advisory committee of journalists and educators concerned with hemisphere affairs assists the dean. Nominations are also sought from news organizations and individuals throughout Latin and North America. Director of the advisory committee is Frank N. Manitzas, former Latin American bureau chief for ABC News and himself a Cabot Prize medalist.
Information on the 1996 winners follows:
Dudley Quentin Althaus, 41, has been Mexico City bureau chief for the Houston Chronicle since 1990. Concentrating on issues of poverty and human rights, he has sought out and written about the lives and concerns of anonymous, struggling people in penetrating and sensitive reporting. Notable have been his stories on the 1991 cholera epidemic in Peru, the 1992 civil rights movement among Latin America's indigenous peoples, the environmental degradation of the Rio Grande and border region, the losing struggle in 1994 of Mexico's peasant farmers to stay on the land and, in a series last year, the educational barriers facing impoverished Mexican and Mexican American children.
Mr. Althaus was raised in Dayton, Ohio, served in the U.S. Navy and earned the B.A. in international studies at Miami University of Ohio in 1979. After further study of Latin America at Georgetown University, he earned a master's degree in journalism at the University of Texas at Austin in 1983. He began his newspaper career with The Brownsville Herald, a 20,000-circulation daily, covering Matamoros, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. After three years there, and promotion to city editor, he joined the business reporting staff of the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald and contributed to the newspaper's award-winning investigation of the impact of the 1986 immigration reform law. He was assigned to Mexico City as the Times Herald's Latin American correspondent in December, 1987, and joined the Houston Chronicle three years later.
Ram÷n Alberto Garza Garcâa, 40, is the founding editor of Reforma of Mexico City, started three years ago and now the most respected newspaper in the city. By providing high wages for its workers and choosing not to advocate a particular political view, Reforma has blazed a new path for modern, objective, ethical journalism in Mexico. Despite threats and violence against its staff and distributors, it has fended off traditional heavy-handed government influence and business corruption and avoided distribution through government-controlled outlets. He has led what many call a journalistic revolution in his country.
Currently, he is editor-in-chief of both Reforma and El Norte of Monterrey, Mexico, where he was born. He was graduated cum laude in 1976 from the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey with a bachelor's degree in communications science. He started his journalism career as an investigative reporter for El Norte in 1973 and studied journalism and political science at the University of Texas at Austin while writing editorials for The Daily Texan in 1977-78. He returned to El Norte in 1979 as managing editor and was named editor-in-chief, at the age of 26, in 1982. He was appointed in 1990 to serve concurrently as news director of Infosel Financiero, the first real-time financial news service in Mexico. With Alejandro Junco he began a project in 1992 to launch a new daily in Mexico City and in 1993 became editor-in-chief of Reforma. He has been a professor of journalism, public opinion and contemporary issues at his alma mater in Monterrey, and is now honorary visiting professor of communications, marketing and the management program at the school. He is also an advisor to the University of Southern California Center for International Journalism.
Timothy Jay Johnson, 38, has been covering Latin America for The Miami Herald since 1989. He is currently the Herald 's bureau chief based in Bogota, reporting on the Andean region. He is known for his versatility and his quick, decisive response on breaking news stories like the political crisis in Haiti and for his skillful documentation of ecological disasters and human rights violations throughout the hemisphere. He has written enterprising feature stories on a wide range of subjects, from a mysterious illness affecting banana plantations to cosmetic surgery in Costa Rica.
Mr. Johnson was born in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the son of Presbyterian missionaries. His family later settled in St. Petersburg, Fla., where he graduated from Eckerd College with a literature degree in 1979. He was a copy editor and reporter for The St. Petersburg Times from 1978 to 1984, when he was awarded a fellowship by the Inter American Press Association to study and write for nine months in Santiago, Chile. Johnson lived in Lima, Peru, from 1985 to 1989, serving as chief correspondent for Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador for United Press International. He joined The Miami Herald in 1989 as a copy editor and was sent to Managua, Nicaragua, as Central American correspondent in 1991. He moved to Bogota this year. He has also reported on Latin America for The Christian Science Monitor, Newsday and CBS Radio.
Eduardo Ulibarri Bilbao, 44, has been editor-in-chief of La Naci÷n of San JosÚ, Costa Rica's most prestigious newspaper, for 14 years. In his column, "Buenos Dâas," which can be read on the Internet, he urges interest groups, politicians and citizens to work together for the common good. News judgment, he believes, must be based on a tradition of public service. His work as a professor of journalism at the University of Costa Rica has also supported high standards in the profession.
Born in Cuba, he settled with his family in Costa Rica when he was a teenager. After graduation from the University of Costa Rica in 1973, he joined La Naci÷n as a reporter and began a rapid climb. Following time off to earn a master's degree in journalism at the University of Missouri in 1976 he was appointed coordinator of special sections for the newspaper. He became international news editor in 1977, national editor in 1978, news editor in 1980 and editor-in-chief in 1982. He was named a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1987. He serves on various international journalism boards and is a past president of the Commission on Freedom of the Press of the Inter American Press Association. He has written, co-authored or edited several books on Central American issues and journalism.
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