<em>Cleveland Plain Dealer</em> Reporter Wins Columbia Journalism School's 2010 Berger Award

The Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University today announced that The Cleveland Plain Dealer's Joanna Connors won the 2010 Mike Berger award. The award recognizes outstanding local reporting. Connors' story, "The Sheltering Sky," detailed the case of an autistic boy who killed his mother. "Connors handled this complex story with in-depth reporting and a well-written narrative that addressed all the medical, legal and personal issues involved in the case," the Berger prize panel said in a statement. Connors receives the prize, and a $1,500 honorarium, today at Columbia's annual Journalism Day celebration. Press release after the jump. New York, NY (May 17, 2010) -- Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism today announced that Joanna Connors, a reporter at The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, is the winner of the 2010 Mike Berger Award for her series, "The Sheltering Sky," the story of a severely autistic son who kills his mother. The prize, named after the late New York Times reporter Meyer â€œMikeâ€ Berger, is conferred by the Journalism School for an outstanding piece of local reporting. Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Journalism School, will present Connors with the award, along with a $1,500 honorarium, on Monday, May 17th, during the schoolâ€™s annual Journalism Day celebration. "This award," said Lemann, "honors exceptional writing about the lives of everyday people." The Berger Committee, comprised of journalism faculty members, honored Connors' story, "The Sheltering Sky," and noted: "From the opening words, 'To whom it may concern: if this letter has been opened and is being read, it is because I have been seriously injured or killed by my son,' it was clear that the reporter had a unique story." "Connors," they continued "handled this complex story with in-depth reporting and a well-written narrative that addressed all the medical, legal and personal issues involved in the case." Joanna Connors joined The Plain Dealer in 1983 working as a theater critic, and remained in the arts and entertainment section for 22 years while she worked as an editor and as the paper's film critic. She moved into longer form journalism in 2005 and three years later wrote "Beyond Rape: A Survivor's Journey," a first-person account of her search for the man who raped her in 1984. The mesmerizing written account of her courageous outreach won a series of prestigious awards including the 2009 American Society of News Editors award for non-deadline writing, and the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism, the Dart Award for Coverage of Trauma, and the National Association of Black Journalists award for special projects. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Berger inaugurated the Times' "About New York" column in the 1950s and set the standard for thought-provoking reporting about the lives of ordinary people. Louis Schweitzer, a New York industrialist who admired Berger's work, created the prize in 1960. The finalists for this year's award included Mark Johnson, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Jeff Seidel, the Detroit Free Press. For more information about the Mike Berger Award, visit http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/berger.

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Cleveland Plain Dealer Reporter Wins Columbia Journalism School's 2010 Berger Award

Mike Taylor

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