Event Coverage Highlight

by Patricia Kranz

As the OPC marks the 80th anniversary of its founding at the Annual Awards Dinner on April 18, the club will honor all the journalists who dedicate, risk, and even lose their lives covering the world – now, and over the past eight decades.

Martin Baron, the executive editor of The Washington Post, will be the keynote speaker, and Lester Holt, anchor of NBC Nightly News and Dateline NBC, will present the awards.

The President’s Award will go to Maggie Steber, a celebrated photojournalist who has worked in more than 60 counties around the world for a range of clients including Newsweek, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and many others. She has earned several awards for her work, including the OPC’s 1988 Olivier Rebbot Award, the Leica Medal of Excellence, Pictures of the Year and World Press Photo awards.

“Maggie Steber’s body of work shows that dedication to the pursuit of stories and journalistic ideals is worthwhile and noble and has a profound impact on the audience and the subjects of the work,” said Pancho Bernasconi, president of the OPC. “Maggie’s long-term commitment to stories, such as her powerful and deeply moving reportage from Haiti over several decades, serves as an example of how a photojournalist can help bring into sharp relief the issues that impact a people and their country.”

Baron took the helm as editor at the Post in December 2012 after serving as editor for The Boston Globe from 2001 to 2012. Newsrooms under his direction have garnered multiple OPC awards and Pulitzer Prizes, among other honors. Baron has been an outspoken critic of President Trump’s attacks against press and what he called the “muddling of fact and fiction.” Last February, during the Reuters Memorial Lecture at Oxford, he said that in the face of “an unrelenting assault from the most powerful person on earth, the answer for us is clear: Just do our job. Do it honestly, honorably, seriously, fairly, accurately, and also unflinchingly.”

Holt spent a total of 19 years as reporter and anchor at CBS in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago before moving to NBC in 2000. In 2015 he became permanent anchor of NBC Nightly News, replacing Brian Williams.

The Annual Dinner at Cipriani, 25 Broadway, will get underway with a cocktail reception at 6:00 p.m., with the dinner and program at 7:00 p.m. Click here to RSVP, or visit: bit.ly/OPC_RSVP.