Best daily newspaper or wire service reporting from abroad
AWARD YEAR: 1980
AWARD NAME: The Hal Boyle Award
RECIPIENT: Richard Ben Cramer
AFFILIATION: The Philadelphia Inquirer
HONORED WORK: Eye-witness account of the Afghani guerillas
For eight days in February, 1981, Richard Ben Cramer of The Philadelphia Inquirer, disguised as a tribesman, accompanied Afghan guerrillas fighting the Russians. Travelling on foot and muleback, he moved from village to village, writing eye-witness accounts of ambushes, gas attacks, and of the determined rebels. He came away convinced they would fight to the last Afghan. Returning months later, he found villages and crops destroyed, and the Soviet occupation established. “This war has become a massacre,” he reported.
Cramer, 28, has a B.A. from Johns Hopkins and a Masters in journalism from Columbia. He won a Pulitzer prize for foreign reporting in 1978.
Citations in this class go to Shirley Christian of The Miami Herald and Mark Seibel of The Dallas Times Herald for their reporting from El Salvador.
Judges: Henry Cassidy, Rosalind Massow, and Ansel Talbert.