Public Employee Press

PEP wins labor journalism awards

The Metro New York Labor Communications Council recently honored PEP with five awards for work published in 2004. At its annual convention on May 19, the organization presented its most prestigious writing award to Associate Editor Jane LaTour for her series of articles on members serving in Iraq and their families at home.

LaTour got the Mary Heaton Vorse Award for writing that “touches our emotions and brings insight into others’ lives by capturing the human side of an issue.” The independent judges said the series, which continues in 2005, uses “consistently well written” individual stories to “open up larger issues.”

George Cohen received a second prize for a cover photograph that accompanied an anti-privatization story. The photo showed Local 375 member Sam Fitzroy 600 feet underground in Water Tunnel #3. Second prize for “unique performance” went to LaTour, Alfredo Alvarado and Diane Williams, associate editors, and Senior Associate Editor Gregory Heires, who is the president of Metro. The honor included PEP’s special contract issue, extensive political campaign coverage and Heires’ series on organizing. The judges praised the work for providing useful information, analyzing important issues and “making good use of comments by members.”

Awards also went to PEP as a whole for “general excellence” and to Williams for her full-page story about management’s extensive effort to fire upstate Local 376 activist Robert Weaver and the union’s victorious defense of “a victimized member.”

DC 37 Education Fund Librarian Ken Nash received two awards for excellence in non-periodical communications: First Prize, with Mimi Rosenberg, for “Building Bridges” on WBAI radio, and Honorable Mention, with public relations staffer Rudy Orozco, for an episode of the DC 37 radio show (NYE) on Bush’s health care policies.

SSEU Local 371’s newspaper, The Unionist, won second prize for graphic design and an award for general excellence, and the Local 420 Communicator newsletter won an award for its special issue on the local’s history.