Inside
NCR Of
awards, humility and updates
The Catholic Press Association,
during its annual meeting held this year in Dallas, awarded National
Catholic Reporter first place for general excellence in the national
newspaper category. It was the second consecutive year that NCR won the
top prize.
This is an ambitious, authoritative publication. It has
hard-hitting edge, comprehensive coverage and is well organized. The writing is
smart, wrote the judges in their critique of the paper. Cover
stories with depth, poetry, global news and movie reviews. Talk about something
for everybody! The inside layouts are pleasing to the eyes with a good mix of
striking photographs and illustrations. Cover designs are interesting.
NCR sets a high, best-in-class standard.
Among the writing awards received was a first place in the best
newswriting/national event category for a Feb. 11, 2000, story by Rome
correspondent John L. Allen Jr. about the controversy surrounding placement of
the tabernacle. This story uses an object that readers are very familiar
with, said the judges, as a launching pad for a broad discussion of
church issues.
Allen also won second place for best news writing/international
event for his treatment of the Vatican document Dominus Iesus. The
judges said the story presents the unvarnished truth of the
document and vividly captures the depth of the controversy. It takes a
complicated issue, gives an excellent distillation of the subject and tells the
story in an extremely readable fashion.
Gerald Renner, a freelance writer from Connecticut, won a first
place award in the best investigative news writing category for Turmoil
in Atlanta, a Nov. 3, 2000, story detailing the takeover of a private
school by the Legionaries of Christ, a religious order. We felt that this
story encompassed the spirit of investigative reporting via the depth of the
material covered and the exposure of the issues. The writing was solid and the
reporter was evenhanded in his approach, the judges wrote. Renner is a
retired religion writer for The Hartford (Conn.) Courant and a
former editor for Religious News Service.
Claire Schaeffer-Duffy, a freelance writer from Worcester, Mass.,
won first place for feature writing for her Nov. 24, 2000, piece Adopting
Mordechai. Good story-telling, good detail, the judges wrote.
Well-executed blend of stories of the Midwestern couple and Israels
most notorious political prisoner. In lesser hands, this would have been a
distracting mess. A dramatic story, well reported and well told.
Managing Editor Pamela Schaeffer won third place in that same
category for her profile of Kathy Doran, her fight with cancer and her
long-time work for social justice in Houston at Christ the Good Shepherd
Parish.
The paper won a second place award for editorial writing for
A century also rich in peacemakers, in the Jan. 7, 2000, issue.
Judges also awarded a first place for front page design, saying,
This front page has outstanding and provocative graphics and
photos. The award is the result of work by Toni-Ann Ortiz, layout editor
and art director. Shes also the one responsible for making the inside
pages pleasing to the eye. She patiently listens to the wordsmiths
around here as we try to explain our visual concepts in streams of halting
prose, and then she somehow translates it all into compelling
presentations.
I was able to bask in the glow of
the notice of the awards for about a minute and a half before I was reminded of
what a humbling pursuit journalism can be. If our goods deeds are there for the
world to see, so are our mistakes. Forever.
The next e-mail I clicked open started this way: Bishop
Luckers full name is Raymond ALPHONSE Lucker! Where did you get that
ALOYSIUS from?
The writer was referring to the profile of the bishop I had
written for the May 25 issue. My answer? I honestly dont know. Except
that Aloysius was the name of my childhood parish and grade school. Lucker
himself was, not surprisingly, gracious in accepting my profuse apologies. He
joked that few people get it right because no one believes anybody is really
named Alphonse.
Which is simply more evidence of Luckers good humor and
generosity in the face of grim news. In a recent note to family and friends he
said that his condition has deteriorated badly in recent weeks.
Experimental treatment at the Mayo Clinic has failed to keep tumors in his
pelvis, leg, ribs and back from growing. He has begun radiation therapy to
relieve pain and enable me to carry on for a while and is
considering another experimental treatment but is not sure he will pursue
it.
Meanwhile I have put myself on the list at Our Lady of Good
Counsel Cancer Home in St. Paul. The Dominican Sisters were most gracious and
will have a place for me when the time comes. I hope that will be later rather
than sooner.
I place myself in the loving arms of God and commend myself
to your prayers.
NCR recently lost a
good and loyal behind-the-scenes friend when Tennyson Schad, 70, died in New
York of cancer May 26. Schad, who had a practice in Manhattan and whose New
York Times obituary noted his pioneering enterprise in behalf of
photography as an art form, was NCRs First Amendment lawyer for
the last 25 years.
During the past 35 years, he served as counsel for Time, Inc., and
other major national publishers. He was a reporters lawyer, if such a
thing can be said. In these litigious times, when small publications like
NCR can face $30 million nuisance suits, it takes considerable support
to keep from avoiding difficult stories. Tennyson was always ready with that
support. His answer to a question about the possible problems in doing a story
was always along the lines of: Just do the journalism. Do your work and
then Ill tell you if youre going to run into any trouble.
He enjoyed the journalistic enterprise as much as any reporter in
the field, was enthusiastic about NCRs work, and he was a superb
editor in the bargain, often offering valuable suggestions for streamlining a
story or cleaning up confusing points.
When he said, Its fine. Run it, you did, without
any worry.
Construction update. A few weeks
back I told how the news and production offices were moving out of their
traditional quarters and scattering about this old building because of an
ominous sag in the ceiling.
Turns out we probably moved none too soon. When workers took off
the acoustic tiles and exposed the beams they found more than a dozen cracked
or broken ceiling joists where they expected to find one or two.
We were fortunate, they say, that the fourth (and top) floor had
not collapsed in on us. The sagging ceiling was hoisted back into place, beam
by beam, and 32 new beams were wedged in and nailed to reinforce the support
for the top floor. In the weeks since, walls have been taken down, a small
kitchen has been moved and reconstruction of the newsroom is well under way.
Well have some pictures of the new digs toward the end of summer.
-- Tom Roberts
My e-mail address is troberts@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, June 15,
2001
|