Dayton reporters honored with Poe Award for Peace Corps series
Dayton reporters honored
Peace Corps series wins Poe award
Dayton Daily News
Dayton Daily News reporters Russell Carollo and Mei-Ling Hopgood are the recipients of the Edgar A. Poe Award for 2003, the White House Correspondents' Association announced Thursday.
The reporters were honored for their series last year on the safety and security of Peace Corps volunteers. The award, named after the former Washington correspondent for The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune and Newhouse Newspapers, honors news coverage of subjects and events of significant national or regional importance to the American people.
"The Poe judges said the Daily News team 'used every reporting tool in the book' — including 20 months of persistent digging, interviews with more than 500 people, travel to 10 countries, filing of 75 Freedom of Information requests and ultimately, a lawsuit against the Peace Corps to pry open public records," according to the announcement.
The association also is giving Mike Allen of The Washington Post the Merriman Smith Memorial Award for outstanding presidential coverage under deadline pressure. Allen was cited for reporting President Bush's secret trip to Baghdad to celebrate Thanksgiving with U.S. troops.
David Sanger of The New York Times is this year's recipient of the Aldo Beckman Award. Sanger is being honored for stories examining how President Bush makes decisions.
The awards will be presented at the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents' Association at the Washington Hilton Hotel on May 1.
