Press Release Excerpt

KRISTOF WINNER OF $25,000 MICHAEL KELLY AWARD for 2005

David Bradley, chairman of Atlantic Media Company, announced today that New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof is this year's recipient of the Michael Kelly Award for his columns denouncing genocide in Sudan and sexual exploitation in Southeast Asia.

The $25,000 award is given annually to a journalist whose work exemplifies a quality that animated Michael Kelly's own career: the fearless pursuit and expression of truth. Kelly, who was the editor of two Atlantic Media publications, The Atlantic Monthly and National Journal, was killed while covering the war in Iraq in 2003.

According to a statement from the award judges, "Kristof linked the word 'genocide' to the ongoing persecution of black Africans in the Sudanese region of Darfur, and focused attention on the continued sexual exploitation of young women in the brothels of Cambodia. With conviction, passion, and audacity, Kristof tugged at the world's conscience, in the best tradition of Michael Kelly."

In addition to Kristof, four journalists were recognized as finalists by the judges: David Grann, a staff writer with The New Yorker; Kim Murphy, Moscow bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times; Maximillian Potter, executive editor of 5280, the Denver city magazine; and Elizabeth Rubin, contributing writer, New York Times Magazine. The finalists will each receive $3,000.