Jon Lee Anderson
Best reporting in any medium on Latin America
AWARD DATE: 2009
AWARD NAME: The Robert Spiers Benjamin Award 2009
AWARD RECIPIENT: Jon Lee Anderson
AWARD RECIPIENT AFFILIATION: The New Yorker
AWARD HONORED WORK: “Gangland”
Jon Lee Anderson goes deep inside some of Rio de Janeiro’s most dangerous and impenetrable slums, or “favelas,” to portray a world of brazen lawlessness and stunning violence. Well ahead of the world’s focus on Rio hosting the 2016 Olympics, Anderson courageously tackles a subject that has seen other journalists killed or beaten when they have tried to investigate the drug gangs that control Rio’s shantytowns. Anderson’s reporting combines vivid details and superb portraits of a society that has become deeply corrupted in the face of almost unstoppable violence.
Read the abstract of Anderson’s article on The New Yorker >>
Citation for Excellence:
William Booth and Steve Fainaru
The Washington Post
“Mexico at War”