Media Relations

News Releases

For Release Upon Receipt - October 26, 2009
Contact: Colin Riley, 617-353-2240, criley@bu.edu

NPR’S CHANA JOFFE-WALT NAMED 2009 DANIEL SCHORR JOURNALISM PRIZE WINNER

(Boston) — WBUR and Boston University today announced that Chana Joffe-Walt, who covers global economics for NPR’s multimedia project “Planet Money,” was selected as the winner of the 2009 Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize for a 24-minute investigative segment on the roots of last fall’s catastrophic financial meltdown.

The Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize, sponsored by Boston University and WBUR, 90.9 FM, Boston’s NPR news station, highlights a new generation of public radio journalists under 35 years old and seeks to inspire them to stretch the boundaries of the medium. Journalists from around the world competed for the $5,000 prize.

Joffe-Walt will be honored at WBUR’s Eighth Annual Public Radio Gala on November 19 at the InterContinental Hotel in Boston. Her piece, entitled “The Watchman,” which aired on “This American Life” in June 2009, focused on how the regulators overseeing the banks and the finance industry failed miserably.

“’The Watchmen’ is a marvelous piece of analytic and investigative journalism,” said finalist judge Charles Kravetz. “It plants the blame for the lack of regulatory oversight at the feet of many sources and paints a complex mosaic of poor governmental decisions, business influences and utter incompetence. This sort of reporting is usually found on the printed page, but ‘The Watchmen’ is a testament to the power of radio in the hands of skilled journalists who know how to take us on a careful and deliberative journey through the maze of history and politics that brought us to the brink of financial ruin. It is a tour de force.”

In addition to Kravetz, the former station manager at New England Cable News, the panel of distinguished journalists who served as Schorr prize judges included:

•Graham Griffith, visiting professor of Journalism, University of Michigan
•Erin Hennessy, news director, KPLU, Tacoma, Washington
•Jake Shapiro, executive director, Public Radio Exchange
•Iris Adler, documentary producer, New England Cable News

Joffe-Walt began her radio career as a volunteer host and news writer at KBCS-FM in Bellevue, Washington, followed by stints at NPR stations KUOW-FM in Puget Sound, KPLU-FM in Seattle/Tacoma covering education, business and technology, and freelance assignments for National Public Radio. She also briefly covered rural issues in central Washington for Northwest News Network. In August 2008, she joined the fledgling “Planet Money” team on a part-time basis, becoming full-time in March. In addition to “This American Life,” her stories can be heard on “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.”

Past recipients of the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize include NPR defense correspondent Guy Raz, whose three-part series entitled “Rescuing the Wounded: Iraq to Germany” focused on the vast improvements in medical care technology, in and near the battlefield since World War I, and the collective impact of such improvements on U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq (2008); NPR National Correspondent Laura Sullivan, whose three-part series “Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons” looked at troubling aspects of the practice of penitentiary confinement and featured interviews with inmates who had not spoken to individuals other than prison staff for many years (2007); and Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, then a NPR foreign correspondent in Mexico City, whose two-part series entitled “Migrants' Job Search Empties Mexican Community” focused on the increasingly negative impact of migration on the provincial Mexican capitol of Malinalco (2006).

Schorr, currently a senior analyst for NPR, has had a distinguished, award-winning career in broadcast journalism, serving with such pioneers as Edward R. Murrow at CBS and CNN’s Ted Turner. Schorr’s integrity and professionalism provided the vision for the journalism award bearing his name.

One of New England’s leading sources of news and information, WBUR, 90.9 FM, is owned and operated by Boston University and is a member station of National Public Radio. WBUR also broadcasts a selection of BBC programs and locally produced programs such as “Here & Now,” “Only a Game,” “On Point,” and “Car Talk.” WBUR has won more than 100 major awards for its news coverage, including several George Foster Peabody Awards, the Associated Press News Station of the year for 2003-05, and three prestigious Edward R. Murrow Awards in the 2007 Radio-Television News Director Association’s (RTNDA) annual national electronic journalism competition.

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