2007 Berger Award Winner - Abigail Tucker

2007 Berger Award Winner - Abigail Tucker
Photos/John Smock

New York, May 1, 2007—Columbia University’s Journalism School today announced that Abigail Tucker, a feature writer for the Baltimore Sun, is the winner of the 2007 Mike Berger Award. The prize, named after the late New York Times reporter Meyer “Mike” Berger, is conferred by the Journalism School for the best in-depth, human-interest reporting. 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.

Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Journalism School, will present Tucker with the award, along with a $1,000 honorarium, on Tuesday, May 15 during the school’s annual Journalism Day celebration. “This award,” said Lemann, “honors beautiful writing on the lives of everyday people.” Louis Schweitzer, a New York industrialist who admired Berger's work, created the prize in 1960.

After graduating from Harvard University, Tucker started her career in journalism in 2003 writing features for the Post Star in Glens Falls, N.Y. The following year, she joined the staff of the Baltimore Sun as a features reporter.

The Berger Committee, comprised of journalism faculty members who reviewed a number of Tucker’s stories written from 2006 to 2007, noted: “In a particularly strong field of entries, Abigail Tucker’s writing on the lives of little-known people stood out for its depth, grace, sensitivity and emotional complexity. She does the Berger tradition proud.”

The finalists for this year’s award included Nicholas Spangler of the Miami Herald and Bryn Nelson of Newsday. This year marks the first time the geographic eligibility for submissions to the Mike Berger Award was extended to cover reporters working for newspapers in the eastern seaboard states from Maine to Florida.
Read more about the Mike Berger Award