The Journalism School of Columbia University in New York gave out the María Moors Cabot awards dedicated to outstanding journalists covering the western hemisphere. The 74th edition of the prizes were awarded to Teodoro Petkoff, newspaper publisher of Tal Cual in Venezuela; David Luhnow, head of the Latin American office of the The Wall Street Journal; as well as Juan Forero, correspondent for the Washington Post and of the South American NPR; and publisher and columnist Miguel Ángel Bastenier, of the newspaper El País and professor of the New Ibero-American Journalism Foundation in Colombia.
In addition to these awards, a special mention was also given to the newspaper El Universo of Ecuador, which has been harassed by President Rafael Correa's defamation lawsuits.
The jury of the awards said that Petkoff started his journalism career at age 66, in 1998 while creating the newspaper Tal Cual, where he publishes three weekly columns challenging the authoritarianism of President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Also, journalist David Luhnow, born and raised in Mexico from U.S. parents, reports about various Latin American topics for the Wall Street Journal, according to the newspaper Excélsior.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
