2009 Dart Award Winners Announced

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a project of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is pleased to announce the winners of the 2009 Awards for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma.  In the newspaper category, the winners are the Honolulu Advertiser and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and in the radio category the winner is “The World,” produced by Public Radio International.

The Honolulu Advertiser won for its exceptional piece, “Crossing the Line: Abuse in Hawai’I Home,” by Rob Perez and Kevin Dayton, with photographer Jeff Widener and layout designer Russell McCrory.  This seven-part series tells the stories of native Hawai’ian women whose lives were forever changed by domestic violence.  It charts the failures of law-enforcement, gaps in the safety net for victims, and the far-reaching consequences to victims, their families and the broader community. Through "Daysha's Diary," the intimate diary of Daysha Aiona-Aka, a 21-year old mother who was murdered at the hands of her estranged boyfriend, the series offers a rare glimpse of the dynamics of abuse, as that abuse unfolds.

Judges singled out "Crossing the Line: Abuse in Hawai’i Homes" for its extraordinarily compelling and exhaustive look at the issue of domestic violence. They praised Perez and Dayton for their ability to transcend cultural and language barriers, and commended Widener for his profound visual storytelling acuity. Judges also hailed the Honolulu Advertiser for its significant allocation of resources and unwavering commitment to this issue.

The Plain Dealer of Cleveland received a Dart Award for the second consecutive year for “Beyond Rape: A Survivor’s Journey,” by Joanna Connors, with photographer Lisa DeJong. This brave and brutally honest first-person inquiry tells the story of the author’s rape in 1984 and its aftermath. “Beyond Rape” delves into Connor’s past by examining the incident itself, the difficult trial and the subsequent years of coping and denial. It then charts Connors’s spiritual and reportorial search to find the man who committed this crime against her.
 
Judges described “Beyond Rape: A Survivor’s Journey” as bold, groundbreaking, and courageous. They called it a remarkable piece of journalism with language that soared.  They commended Connors’ ability to turn her reportorial skills on her own sexual assault, and called this special report a major contribution to public understanding of trauma.

Public Radio International’s “The World” received the Dart Award for "Rape as a Weapon of War," reported by Jeb Sharp and edited by Jennifer Goren. A startling five-part investigative series, the piece examines the brutality of sexual violence in conflict zones and the medical, humanitarian, legal, and political response to it.

Judges called "Rape as a Weapon of War" a powerful, compelling portrayal of human beings who have been violated in the most horrifying ways. They praised Sharp for her clear, focused storytelling and ability to convey the traumatic environments that lead to such dehumanizing acts.  They also commended her for the great respect and compassion used in reporting, and for giving the survivors a sense of agency and power by telling of their stories.

2009 Dart Award Final Judges

John Barth is the Managing Director of PRX.org, the Public Radio Exchange. PRX distributes network, station and independently produced programs to hundreds of public stations in the US and Canada and has expanded to non-broadcast outlets such as Amazon, Audible, iTunes and others. Barth is a longtime public radio producer, reporter and editor.  He was the founding producer of the public radio program Marketplace, went from there to run all of AOL's news operations and business, and then to the premier spoken-word site, Audible.com.  Barth was Editorial Director of the Public Radio Collaboration project 'Whose Democracy Is It?' in 2003. He lives in St. Louis.

June Cross is an award-winning producer with thirty years of television news and documentary experience. She was most recently an executive producer for This Far by Faith, a six-part PBS series on the African-American religious experience. She worked for PBS’s Frontline, CBS News, and PBS’s MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Her reporting for the NewsHour on the US invasion of Grenada won the 1983 Emmy for Outstanding Coverage of a Single Breaking News Story. Secret Daughter, an autobiographical film that examined how race and color had affected her family, won an Emmy in 1997 and was honored that same year with a duPont-Columbia Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. She is also the author of a memoir, Secret Daughter published by Viking in 2006.  Her latest documentary, The Old Man and the Storm, which follows the travails of an extended New Orleans family for three years post-Katrina, will air on PBS' Frontline in early 2009. Her other credits include: Ashes of the Cold War; Showdown in Haiti; The Confessions of RosaLee; and A Kid Kills. Cross was senior producer for the FRONTLINE productions Living on the Edge with correspondent Bill Moyers, Mandela, and School Colors, which won a duPont-Columbia Journalism Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism in 1995.  Cross received her B.A. from Harvard, and was a fellow at Carnegie-Mellon University's School of Urban and Public Affairs and the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Studies at Harvard.

David Handschuh has been an award winning staff photographer at the New York Daily News for more than 20 years and an adjunct Professor of Photojournalism at New York University since 1995.  He is a past president of the National Press Photographers Association, a 10,000 member organization of media professionals, and is on the board of the New York Press Photographers Association.  In 1994 Handschuh co-authored the “National Media Guide for Emergency and Disaster Incidents,” which is in its third printing.   Handschuh continues to work with public safety providers and the media on a national level to foster better relations between the two.  He has worked on issues of journalism and trauma, participating as an Ochberg Fellow and member of the Dart Society.  In addition, Handschuh initiated the first-ever study of the effects of covering traumatic situations on his peers.  He authored a health survey that will quantify the affect of coverage of the World Trade Center attack and document health issues faced by journalists as a result of covering 9/11.  He has received many recognitions including being selected as the first visual journalist invited to participate in the first class of Ethics Fellows at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and being nominated three times for a Pulitzer Prize.  He has also received awards for his work from the National Press Photographers Association, Pictures of the Year, New York Press Photographers Association, New York Press Club, Society of the Silurian’s, the Deadline Club and the National Headliners.

Susan Herman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Pace University.  From 1997 to 2005, she served as the Executive Director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, the nation’s leading resource and advocacy organization for crime victims.  With more than 25 years of leadership experience in government, criminal justice, and social services, Herman is an internationally recognized spokesperson for victims of crime and a new vision of justice for victims, parallel justice.  Previously, Herman served as Director of Community Services at The Enterprise Foundation, Director of the Domestic Violence Division of Victim Services (now Safe Horizon) in New York City, Special Counsel to the Police Commissioner of New York City, Director of Mediation Services at the Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution, as an attorney at the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, and as an instructor at New York University’s School of Law and NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service. 

Joe Hight is the director of information and development for The Oklahoman/NewsOK.com, and has been in the newspaper/multimedia business for more than 29 years.  Hight served two terms as president of The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, and is among its founders.  He co-authored the Dart Center publications, "Tragedies & Journalists: A Guide for More Effective Coverage" and the upcoming "Managing the Unexpected." He also wrote the online booklet "First Responders." Hight co-founded the People and the Media Program at the University of Central Oklahoma, where he was named as a "distinguished former student."  He is immediate past chairman of the Mid-America Press Institute and serves on the boards of several other journalism-related organizations.  Hight has taught and lectured at several universities and media organizations in the United States, Australia, London and Ireland, been a visiting faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a panelist at the Aspen Institute and has spoken at conventions and workshops, including four straight National Writers Workshops.  Hight has written several articles on writing, editing, interviewing and coverage of victims in the latest edition of  the textbook, "Reporting for the Media”.  At The Oklahoman, he was the victims team leader of the Oklahoma City bombing coverage that won two national SPJ awards, a national Dart Award for Excellence in Coverage of Violence, among others.

Achy Obejas was born in Havana, Cuba in 1956, and came to the United States with her parents at the age of six, after the Cuban revolution.  She grew up in Michigan City, Indiana and moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1979.  Obejas is the author of six books, including the critically acclaimed novel, Days Awe. Her most recent novel, Ruins, is a Barnes & Noble Discover Great Writers selection.  An award-winning journalist, she worked for more than ten years for the Chicago Tribune writing and reporting about arts and culture. Among literally thousands of stories, she helped cover Pope John Paul II's historic 1998 visit to Cuba, the arrival of Al-Queda prisoners in Guantánamo, the Versace murder, and the AIDS epidemic.  Obehas writes regularly about Latin music for The Washington Post and about books for In These Times.  During her career, Obejas received a Pulitzer for a Tribune team investigation, the Studs Terkel Journalism Prize, several Peter Lisagor journalism honors, two Lambda Literary awards, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry, and residencies at Yaddo, Ragdale and the Virginia Center for the Arts, among others.  Obejas’ poetry and fiction have been published in Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, Indiana Review, Story, La Gaceta de Cuba, Habana Elegante, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Best of Helicon Nine, Another Chicago Magazine, Abraxas; Antigonish Review, Bilingual Review, and many others.  Currently, she is the Sor Juana Writer in Residence at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, and continues to spend extended time in Havana.

Ulrich Schnyder, M.D. is a psychiatrist and licensed psychotherapist and professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.  He is the head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University Hospital Zurich.  His research activities are currently focused on different aspects of traumatic stress research such as epidemiology and neurobiology, psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy for PTSD, and resilience to stress.  Schnyder is the past president of the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ESTSS), President of the International Federation for Psychotherapy (IFP), and President-elect of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS).