2007 Oakes Award Presentation and Panel

On Monday evening, February 11, 2008, the winners of the 2007 John B. Oakes Award were presented and participated in a panel discussion about their winning works.
Aaron Scott ('08), the winner of the first John B. Oakes Scholarship was also recognized during the evening.

The evening was opened with the remarks by John G. H. Oakes:

Photo/Stephanie Gray

On behalf of John B. Oakes’ immediate family—his wife, Margery H. Oakes, and my sister Andra, who is here tonight, and my other two sisters Alison and Cynthia––a profound thank-you goes to Dean Arlene Morgan, to the Columbia School of Journalism, to the School’s Dean Lemann, and to the judges who culled three particularly outstanding award recipients from 2007’s pool of outstanding submissions.

These days it seems everyone, left, right, and center, is passionate about the declining quality of our environment––everyone except, perhaps, the current leading candidates for the U.S. presidency, who seem to be united in their lack of interest in that topic, if nothing else.

Back in 1951, when people were more concerned about the Reds than the Greens, the journalist for whom this award is named initiated the country’s first newspaper column devoted to the environment. First as an editorial writer, and then from 1961 to ’76, as editorial page editor of the New York Times, through a total of six presidential administrations, John B. Oakes championed the environment, along with civil rights, and a generally progressive outlook. The award was founded by his friends and family in 1994, and I’m pleased to say my father took an active and enthusiastic role in its administration up until his death in 2001.

The journalists whose work we celebrate tonight are not only master craftspeople. They are defenders of the public interest, our interest, and we are grateful to them for their commitment. This year’s 2007 John B. Oakes Award is shared by two first-place winners: the Los Angeles Times and the Times Picayune of New Orleans.

The L.A. Times wins the Oakes Award for the second year in a row with Judy Pasternak’s series “Blighted Homeland,” a deeply affecting look at the contamination of Navajo lands in Utah from radioactive mines: the flip side of the supposed solution to the energy crisis that we would do well to remember when considering the re-birth of the nuclear industry in this country. This was a series marked by first-rate writing and research and chronicles an ongoing disaster that is quote “emblematic of so many other environmental problems resulting from greed, government inaction and political interference.”

The Times Picayune’s three-day series, “Last Chance to Save a Disappearing Coast,” involved reporting by Bob Marshall, Mark Schleifstein, Matt Brown and photographer Ted Jackson. Bob Marshall and Dan Swenson are here to represent the team. This was a truly monumental, and successful, effort that involved the best use of a newspaper’s resources and included impressive interactive online graphics, created by Mr. Swenson. The series vividly documents the washing away and subsidence of the wetlands around New Orleans—and makes clear that that long-suffering city’s problems are far from over.

In the magazine competition, a story with a distinctly literary tinge, McKenzie Funk’s “Cold Rush: The Coming Fight for the Melting North,” which appeared in Harper’s last fall, took first place prize. Funk touches on an aspect of global warming we’ll be seeing more of, unfortunately: how it opens up the potential for geopolitical conflict.

The runner-up in the magazine division was the Natural Resources Defense Council’s “OnEarth Magazine,” for the article “Canada’s Highway to Hell,” by Andrew Nikiforuk, which documents the huge environmental cost of extracting fossil fuel from tar sands.  

In many ways, through his pioneering environmental advocacy, what John B. Oakes argued against was expediency, and what he just as steadily fought for was the future: the future of the planet and our descendants. Thus, it seems appropriate to honor him not only with an award recognizing current journalists who, often against great odds, produce important work, but to give a helping hand to the next crop of heroic scribes. I’m pleased to recognize Aaron Scott as the winner of the first John B. Oakes Scholarship.  We hope that Mr. Scott will use the skills he is learning under the leadership of Professors Jonathan Weiner and Marguerite Holloway to pursue the kind of journalism we recognize tonight.

Thank you.