Judging of Mimi Award Nominations Begins

A panel of six distinguished journalists has begun selecting the 2008 Mimi Award, the award committee announced this week.

"I am thrilled with the caliber of nominees," said Melissa Manware, a 2005 Dart Center-Ochberg Fellow who headed The Mimi organizing committee. "This shows that talented, caring and inspiring editors are working for publications large and small all across the nation. I wish we could recognize every one of them."

The exhaustive search, which ended Jan. 15, looked to find editors who exhibit the qualities of the award's namesake, the late Providence Journal editor Mimi Dolbier Burkhardt. In its second year, The Mimi Award is sponsored by the Dart Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the coverage of tragedies and the well-being of journalists who handle those stories.

The judges will make their recommendation to the Dart Society's board of directors by mid-March, and an announcement of the winner will be made at a reception in the winner's hometown. The Mimi carries a $1,000 prize.

The judges are Mimi Award founder Kate Bramson, a 2005 Dart Center-Ochberg Fellow and reporter at the Providence Journal; 2007 Mimi Award winner David Clark Scott of the Christian Science Monitor; Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune Editorial Page Editor Kerry Drake; and three other Dart Center Ochberg fellows: Jimmie Briggs, a freelance journalist in New York; University of Texas at Austin Professor Donna DeCesare; and Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Robert Jamieson.