NATIONAL
LEVEL
Julie Winokur and Ed Kashi
Freelance
San Francisco, CA
This year’s Media Award winners in the national category represent a new era in journalism -- web-based stories where visuals, sound, and the written word are artfully joined to tell a compelling story.
Julie Winokur, a freelance writer based in San Francisco, and her husband, photographer Ed Kashi, have been working for the past six years on “YEARS AHEAD: Aging in America,” a multimedia project that examines the social impact of longevity. Mr. Kashi’s photographs for this project have won awards from Pictures of the Year 1997, 1998, and 2001, as well as the 2001 World Press Photo competition.
An excerpt from the series currently appears at www.aging.msnbc.com. The team uses photography, audio, text and flash sequences that appear as mini-documentaries to create a portrait of the many faces of an aging population. The presentation allows viewers to explore varied aspects of older people’s lives, possibly unfamiliar territory for many. It shows offbeat groups of active elders-lindy hoppers, motorcyclists, exotic dancers; inmates in prison geriatric wards; Native Americans trying to preserve their past; new approaches to caregiving; and a widow facing her future.
The site is also linked to related articles and films on health maintenance, reference materials about aging research, and pertinent aging organizations.
Ms. Winokur’s articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Magazine, Salon, Natural History, Audubon, Travel & Leisure, and the Sunday magazines of The Seattle Times and The San Jose Mercury News, among others. She was also managing editor of Inside the L.A. Riots, a book that examines the roots of racial conflict in Los Angeles.
Her last book, We the Media: A Citizen’s Guide to Fighting for Media Democracy (New Press), looks at the corporate influence over media content. It covers who owns the media, how news content is commercialized and how this compromises the public’s access to information, and what is being done to create changes.
As a photojournalist, Mr. Kashi has worked in over 55 countries and has been published extensively all over the world. His work appears regularly in National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Fortune, GQ, Smithsonian, The Sunday Times Magazine (London), Newsweek, Scientific American, and U.S. News & World Report, among others. He has published two monographs: The Protestants: No Surrender and When the Borders Bleed: The Struggle of the Kurds (Pantheon). He most recently spent several years documenting the lives of Jewish settlers in the West Bank. This work has also won numerous awards. Mr. Kashi also participates in forums and lectures on photojournalism and documentary photography.
“YEARS AHEAD: Aging in America” is supported, in part, by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Open Society Institutes Project on Death in America, and the California Endowment.
LOCAL/REGIONAL
LEVEL
Lindsay Peterson
The Tampa Tribune
Lindsay Peterson has written about aging for seven years, winning statewide and regional awards for her stories about caregiving and nursing homes, including a first-person account of a week spent living in a nursing home. Her goal has been to dispel the stereotypes of aging and to show that aging is part of a cycle that can’t be stopped or disregarded.
She came to The Tampa Tribune after working at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Pensacola, Florida, and Wichita, Kansas, and as an editorial assistant at Woman’s Day magazine in New York. She has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, Columbia.
The articles in her submission concern policy issues and problems regarding nursing homes and homecare in Florida. The series, called Due Care, focuses primarily on the work of a task force formed last year to advise the Florida legislature on long-term care. Ms. Peterson’s goal was to involve the public, inform them of meetings, and, she says, “Help them understand the breadth and complexity of the issues, first by separating misconception from reality, second by showing how the elements of the system, from homecare to nursing homes, were interrelated.” Her achievement is in presenting complex and intricate issues to the general public clearly and readably.
She also included two columns containing “real people in-long-term care” stories. One is a personal account of caring for her mother, and the other is a profile of a lively centenarian.
Her writings on the subject of healthcare for older adults have expanded to other media to meet the modern public’s needs. In August 2000, The Tampa Tribune became part of a new health website launched by TBO.com. Established as a guide to caregivers, its mission was to fill an information gap in the Tampa Bay area to supplement the general material on the subject they can access online. The site supplies caregivers with names, numbers, web addresses and advice on how to navigate the system in Florida. Its second mission, in keeping with Ms. Peterson’s commitment to the public, is to inform users on the latest public policy issues. The website’s goal is not to advise, but to lead caregivers to resources that can answer their questions. An important part of this valuable site is a bulletin board that can be used for support and the exchange of information.
In print and online, her work relates policy to people, providing good background and resource information to help her readers understand the issues and their own options and opportunities.
Honorable Mention
Nancy Weaver Teichert
Sacramento Bee
Nancy Weaver Teichert is a graduate of Indiana University. Her articles in the Sacramento Bee’s “age beat” cover a wide variety of subjects, including estates, pensions for minorities, older refugees, elder abuse, older drivers, and health improvement in later years. These are all addressed from a personal perspective, highlighting the experience of older individuals to illuminate the issues, and providing useful information. The stories draw the reader in, and give a sense of learning about issues through her vivid portrayals of their effect on older people.
A Sacramento Bee reporter since 1985, Ms. Teichert has covered general assignments and social services. She contributed to a series called A Madness Called Meth, about methamphetamines, which won the 2001 Nancy Dickerson White award for reporting on drug issues. She was formerly with the Denver Post and Jackson Clarion-Ledger, where she was part of a team that won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for public service. She was also honored with the Roy Howard Public Service Award and the World Hunger Award.
Her depiction of the personal experiences of social issues is a powerful approach, creating empathy and providing insight into areas that affect all of us.
