2006 Oakes Award Winner - Los Angeles Times

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contacts:
Barbara Fasciani, 212-854-0123 or bf55@columbia.edu
Melanie A. Farmer, 212-854-9082 or mf2362@columbia.edu

Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism Honors Los Angeles Times with the John B. Oakes Award for Outstanding Environmental Journalism

New York, December 11, 2006—The Journalism School has recognized the Los Angeles Times’ project “Altered Oceans,” an 18-month investigation into the health status of the oceans, as the 2006 winner of the John B. Oakes Award for distinguished environmental journalism.

The award honors Times reporter Kenneth R. Weiss and his team for making an exceptional contribution to advancing public understanding of environmental issues. An award ceremony and an open discussion of the project will be held on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007 at 6:00 p.m. at the journalism building located at W. 116th St. and Broadway in New York.

Weiss was the lead reporter on the “Altered Oceans” team, which included reporter Usha Lee McFarling and photographers Rick Loomis and Brian Vander Brug. The series and its companion Web site document how modern life is feeding “an explosion of primitive organisms,” into the oceans, leading to a “rise of slime” that kills larger species and sickens people. The project appeared in the Times from July 30 through Aug. 3, 2006.

The Oakes judges cited the Times series for the breadth and depth of a journey that took Weiss and his team from Australia to Wake Island to America’s Gulf Coast, the Caribbean, and back to the Pacific Northwest. Throughout his investigation, Weiss reported finding a common thread in brain-damaged marine mammals washing ashore, beachgoers sickened by red tides, and coral reefs dying from carpets of algae. The project concluded that man-made abuse was “pushing the oceans back to the dawn of evolution.”

Weiss, 49, has been a Times reporter since 1990 and has covered the California coast and the oceans for the past five years. He started reporting his series in 2005 and was often accompanied by photographer Rick Loomis, whose video reporting and photographs also appear on the Web site along with those of Brian Vander Brug. Usha Lee McFarling, a former Times science reporter, wrote one story, “The Chemical Imbalance,” in the five-part series. Frank Clifford edited the project.

A second place honorable mention citation, which carries a $1,000 prize, went to the Sacramento Bee for “Tempting Fate,” an exhaustive and ongoing investigation into Sacramento’s readiness to withstand a catastrophic flood, a threat posed by Central Valley’s crumbling levee system and “the failure of politicians, flood officials, developers and area residents to acknowledge and address the problems.” Bee reporters Matt Weiser, Deb Kollars, Phillip Reese, and Carrie Peyton Dahlberg produced the series.

The judges applauded the Bee’s dedication of resources that enabled the reporters to create a detailed and alarming examination of the infrastructure of Sacramento, post the Katrina devastation in New Orleans. The Bee found that the city faces the gravest flood risk of any U.S. metropolitan area, including New Orleans, because of the confluence of two major rivers that would surely overwhelm its weak levee system. The series and subsequent stories led to the passage in November of a $6 billion ballot measure to repair the state’s aging flood-control system.

The Oakes judges called the work a great example of “serious local watchdog journalism” that held city officials accountable for an environmental hazard that has been allowed to fester for decades.

The Oakes award was founded in 1994 in honor of the late New York Times editorial writer John B. Oakes, founder of the op-edit pages, and has gained a reputation as a premier environmental writing prize. The award is directed by Arlene Morgan, the Journalism School’s associate dean of prizes and programs. Judges represent a cross section of distinguished journalists and environmental specialists.

For more information about the Oakes award, visit www.jrn.columbia.edu/events/oakes or e-mail am494@columbia.edu.

About the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
For almost a century, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism has been preparing journalists in a program that stresses academic rigor, ethics, journalistic inquiry, and professional practice. Founded with a gift from Joseph Pulitzer in 1903, the school offers master of science, master of arts, and doctor of philosophy degrees.

About Columbia University
Founded in 1754 as King’s College, Columbia University in the City of New York is the fifth oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and today is one of the world’s leading academic and research institutions. For more information about the University, visit www.columbia.edu.