Best magazine reporting from abroad
AWARD YEAR: 1980
AWARD NAME: The Mary Hemingway Award
AWARD RECIPIENT: Joseph Kraft
AWARD RECIPIENT AFFILIATION: The New Yorker
AWARD HONORED WORK: “Letter from OPEC”
Twenty-one years ago Joseph Kraft won the OPC award for his Saturday Evening Post coverage of the Algerian revolt. Fourteen years later, he won it for a series of New Yorker letters, from China, Moscow and Hanoi. This year he wins the award for his Letter from OPEC, again in The New Yorker, a thorough description of the Caracas conference, and of the people, conflicts and
negotiations that fix the price the world must pay for energy. It’s an article with grave implications for an oil-hungry world, and closes with a Venezuelan’s observation on oil ceiling
prices: “The OPEC countries live in warm climates. We don’t need a roof. The industrialized countries live in cold climates. They’re going to have to build the roof.” Kraft worked for The Washington Post and New York Times before becoming a syndicated columnist. He’s been contributing to The New Yorker since 1971.
A citation goes to T. D. Allman of GEO Magazine for “The Risky Turkish Balancing Act,” and to the Newsweek team of Angus Deming, Paul Martin, Steven Strasser, Fred Coleman, David Martin, Bob Levin and William Schmidt for the “Poland Package.”
Judges: Grace Naismith, Jean Baer, Ed Cunningham, and Meyer Lurie.