2007 Cabot Prize Winners

New York, July 10, 2007 - The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism today announced the 2007 winners of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize for outstanding reporting on Latin America and the Caribbean, honoring journalists who have covered the Western Hemisphere and, through their reporting and editorial work, have furthered inter-American understanding.

The 2007 winners are: Alfredo Corchado, Mexico bureau chief, the Dallas Morning News; Gary Marx, foreign correspondent, Chicago Tribune; Maria Teresa Ronderos, editorial advisor, Semana Magazine (Colombia); and José Vales, Latin American correspondent, El Universal (Mexico).

“This year, we had an especially lively and competitive field of nominees for the Cabot Prize,” said Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Journalism School. “This is welcome and wonderful news for the Americas, a region which desperately needs the kind of professional, courageous, and enterprising journalism exemplified by our 2007 winners.”

Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger will present the prizes at a dinner and ceremony on Tuesday, Oct. 9, on Columbia's Morningside campus. Each prize winner will receive a medal and a $5,000 honorarium. News organizations that employ the winners will receive bronze plaques. The 2007 Cabot winners are described below. For further description, please visit www.jrn.columbia.edu/events/cabot . Photos of winners are available upon request; e-mail mf2362@columbia.edu .

Alfredo Corchado

Corchado, Mexico bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News, covers a deadly beat that scares off most other journalists--drug-related crime and violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, now considered one of the world's most dangerous places to practice journalism.

In this savage climate, Corchado has refused to back down. He keeps producing stories about drug dealers, police and government corruption, the epidemic disappearance of women, and the spread of organized crime among Mexican drug cartels into Dallas and Houston. He has exposed The Zetas, former Mexican military commandos now working as a private army for drug lords, described mass shootouts that no one else writes about, obtained and described videos of revenge executions, and revealed how the few arrested for the mass murder of women in Juarez are often innocent stooges.

For extraordinary bravery and enterprise, Columbia University is honored to award Alfred Corchado with the Maria Moors Cabot Prize.

Gary Marx

Marx, a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, has been one of a small group of U.S. reporters working out of permanent bureaus the Cuban government allowed to be established there in the late 1990s. In February, after five years reporting from Havana, Marx was told by the Cuban government that his press credentials would not be renewed and he must leave the island. Their reason: His stories were too “negative.” But in the view of the Cabot Prize Board, Marx's reporting was devoid of the ideological side-taking that often taints journalistic stories about Cuba. He was just telling the story of Cuba to his readers-the good and the bad-and telling it honestly and skillfully.

For years of professional journalism covering Cuba in the face of extraordinary obstacles, Gary Marx is a worthy recipient of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize.

Maria Teresa Ronderos

Ronderos, editorial advisor at Semana Magazine of Colombia, is an exemplar of the highest standards of ethics, professionalism, and dogged reporting in another of the world's most dangerous countries to practice journalism. Reporter, editor, teacher, and defender of press freedom, Ronderos has been a mentor to many young journalists in Colombia and a key player in fighting to restore peace and civil society to the country, which has been ravaged by drug-related violence.

Ronderos fulfilled these various roles while overseeing Semana Magazine as its managing editor from 2000-2005. The magazine plays a key role fighting to restore peace and civil society to Colombia, which has been ravaged by drug-related violence. Ronderos has combined her knowledge of the United States with her experience in Latin America to build bridges of understanding between north and south. As both editor and writer at Semana Magazine, she wrote and directed coverage of secret links between politicians and paramilitary groups responsible for numerous massacres and political executions. She has also helped shed important light on the dark world of Colombian drug traffickers and US-backed efforts to bring them to justice.

In addition to her leadership role as editorial advisor, Ronderos continues writing biweekly online opinion pieces. As a journalism teacher, Ronderos has developed and taught courses on covering elections to the editors of on line editions of Latin American newspapers. With a colleague, she also wrote a manual on covering elections, intended for use in Colombia. Ronderos has been a mentor to many journalists and, as president of Colombia’s Foundation for the Freedom of the Press, works to implement mechanisms to protect journalists working in dangerous conditions.

For her rich and diverse career and her commitment to improving journalism in Colombia, Maria Teresa Ronderos is a worthy recipient of the Maria Moors Cabot prize.

José Vales

Vales, a Latin American correspondent for El Universal of Mexico, provides readers in the Americas with a steady diet of stories about important Latin American issues and scoops about corruption and human rights abuses from his post in Buenos Aires.

For over 10 years, Argentine journalist José Vales has covered some of the most important issues in Latin America and scored some of its biggest scoops. He has worked for some of the best papers and magazines in the Americas. Now Buenos Aires-based as the South America correspondent for Mexico’s El Universal newspaper and correspondent for Colombia’s El Tiempo, he previously worked for Mexico’s Reforma newspaper and Colombia’s Cambio magazine, among others.

In 2000, Vales’ relentless investigative reporting led to the revelation that Ricardo Cavallo, a notorious torturer during Argentina’s dirty war (known by the name Serpico), was hiding in plain sight in Mexico, working under an assumed name as the director of the Mexican National Vehicle Registration Agency. Published in Reforma, the story led to Cavallo’s arrest and extradition to Spain in 2003, an important case in international human rights law. Cavallo is still in custody and awaiting trial. Vales has also covered the most important political events in Latin American countries, including the failed 2002 coup against President Hugo Chavez and the 2003 overthrow of Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada.

For his aggressive journalism and unusual role of encompassing the entire continent in his coverage, Columbia University is honored to present José Vales with a Maria Moors Cabot Prize.

About the Maria Moors Cabot Prize

Founded in 1938 by the late Godfrey Lowell Cabot of Boston as a memorial to his wife, the Maria Moors Cabot Prize is the oldest international award in journalism. Since its inception, 252 Cabot Prizes and 56 special citations have been awarded to journalists from more than 30 countries in the Americas. The prizes are administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism under the guidance of Josh Friedman, director of international programs at the school.

Recommendations for the winners are made with the advice and approval of the board of the Maria Moors Cabot Prizes. Members of the 2007 Cabot Board are: Arlene Morgan, chair and associate dean for programs and prizes at the Journalism School; Josh Friedman, director of the Maria Moors Cabot Prizes and director of international programs at the Journalism School; David Adams, Latin America correspondent for the St. Petersburg Times; Rosental Calmon Alves, Knight Chair in Journalism and UNESCO Chair in Communication and director, Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at University of Texas at Austin; Jose de Cordoba, senior special writer for the Wall Street Journal; John Dinges, associate professor at the Journalism School and former editorial director of National Public Radio; Juan Enriquez-Cabot, great-grandson of Maria Moors Cabot and chairman and CEO of Biotechonomy LLC; Michèle Montas-Dominique, chief spokeswoman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and until 2002, editor-in-chief, Radio Haiti-Inter; Jorge Ramos, senior news anchor for Univision Network; Linda Robinson, contributing editor for U.S. News & World Report; Edward Schumacher, former CEO and editorial director of Meximerica Media; and Enrique Zileri, director, Caretas magazine (Peru). Seven of the eleven members of the Cabot Prize Board have won the Cabot medal.