AGU Selects Winners of Three Journalism Awards

Dan Vergano of USA Today, Michelle Nijhuis of High Country News, and the Times-Picayune (New Orleans) are receiving the American Geophysical Union’s 2006 journalism awards. Vergano is receiving the David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism—News for his article “The Debate’s Over: Globe Is Warming,” USA Today’s cover story on 13 June 2005.

Nijhuis takes the Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism—Features for a three-part series with the overall title “Hot Times: Global Warming in the West,” which appeared on the front page of the western Colorado-based bimonthly newspaper High Country News on 24 January, 18 April, and 17 October 2005.

The Times-Picayune, a daily newspaper, will receive a special award for its coverage of scientific research demonstrating the vulnerability of New Orleans to hurricanes and other environmental impacts in the years prior to Hurricane Katrina, according to a statement by the AGU.

In choosing Vergano’s USA Today article, the Perlman Award selection committee said, “Rather than rehashing the debate of the existence of global warming and the accuracy of predictive climate models, his exceptional article . . . propels us forward through an emerging realization of the global, severe societal impact of global warming to the harsh economic, moral, and technical realities facing industry and policy makers.”

In recognizing Nijhuis’s reporting in High Country News, the Sullivan Award selection committee said, “This series of articles did a particularly good job of combining science, policy, and human interest in telling the story of global warming from a regional perspective. . . . By writing a series of articles on a common underlying topic, Nijhuis is able to illustrate the interdisciplinary nature of global warming research and its effect on nature.”

The special AGU award to the Times-Picayune originated with a recommendation from AGU’s public information committee, which praised the newspaper’s efforts over a period of years to inform its readership about such matters as wetland preservation, land subsidence, levee reinforcement, storm surge, and hurricane prediction.