FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE JUNE 6, 2005
Contact: Julia Rothwax, 212-284-7637, jrothwax@theatlantic.com

KRISTOF WINNER OF $25,000 MICHAEL KELLY AWARD for 2005
** To be honored at awards dinner this Thursday in Washington DC **

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.

The journalists will be honored at a dinner in Washington this Thursday evening.

Atlantic Media received a total of 72 entries from reporters and editors at newspapers and magazines from across the country. The award is for work published in 2004.

A panel of five journalists served as judges for this year's award: John Aloysius Farrell, Washington bureau chief of the Denver Post; Charles Green, editor of National Journal; Michel Martin, a correspondent with ABC News; Cullen Murphy, managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly; and Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate.

More information on the award and winners can be found at www.kellyaward.com.

TO COVER THE PRE-DINNER RECEPTION, PLEASE CONTACT TIM LAVIN AT 212 284-7635.

***

Nicholas D. Kristof has one of the most prestigious perches in American journalism: a column on the op-ed pages of The New York Times. In 2004, Kristof chose to use that perch to summon the world's attention to human suffering in the Sudan and Southeast Asia. Traveling to isolated regions, he spoke up for victims who lacked the voice to speak for themselves. He 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.

Kristof, 46, writes op-ed columns that appear each Wednesday and Saturday in The New York Times. Kristof joined the Times in October 1984, initially covering economics. He served as a business correspondent based in Los Angeles, Hong Kong bureau chief, Beijing bureau chief and Tokyo bureau chief. In 2000, he covered the presidential campaign. In 1990 Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement.

"The Brand" by David Grann documents the rise and potential demise of the Aryan Brotherhood, a murderous gang that has spread its tentacles throughout the federal prison system and beyond. In his fearlessly reported and brilliantly written feature, Grann vividly depicts the brutal subculture of America's maximum security penitentiaries. He also tells the inspiring story of how a gutsy prosecutor named Gregory Jessner took on the gang, at great personal risk. Grann shows how by indicting the Aryan Brotherhood, Jessner is striking a blow for the rights of some of the least sympathetic victims in our society -- convicted, violent criminals who have become prey inside our prison walls.

Grann, 38, has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since July 2003. His articles have covered everything from New York City's antiquated water tunnels to the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang to the search for the giant squid. Before joining The New Yorker, Grann was a senior editor at The New Republic, and, from 1995 until 1996, executive editor of The Hill newspaper.

Kim Murphy doesn't just cover the news. She tells stories that help her readers care about, and understand, the news. In reporting on Chechnya, she wrote a gripping piece about so-called "black widows"-female suicide bombers who stalk Russia. In her coverage of Chechen separatists who took hundreds of people hostage at a school in the Russian city of Beslan, she featured a 27-year-old Russian mother and hostage who was forced "to make a Sophie's choice: Save one child and leave behind another, possibly to face death." As Moscow bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, Murphy wrote with authority and clarity about the political shift taking place under Russian President Vladimir Putin and its implications for U.S.-Russian relations. Her remarkable body of work reflects the range of stories that foreign correspondents-at their best-craft, often in very difficult circumstances and at great personal risk.

Murphy, 49, has been a foreign and national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times for the past 15 years, covering assignments in Russia, the Middle East, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and the Pacific Northwest. She joined the paper in 1983 as a general assignment staff writer for the Orange County edition. Previously she worked as a reporter and assistant metro editor at the Orange County Register, a reporter at the Minot Daily News in North Dakota, and an assistant editor at the North Biloxian in Mississippi. Earlier this year she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.

When the Air Force Academy announced in 2002 that it would court martial, for the first time, a cadet on charges of rape, the overwhelming public reaction was, "It's about time." Maximillian Potter's reaction was to find out what happened. After he did, in a riveting piece in Denver's city magazine, 5280, the charges against the 20-year-old cadet were dismissed. The cadet's father later told Potter, "You saved my son's life. Thank you." The Air Force story was one of three extraordinary pieces by Potter submitted for the Michael Kelly Award. In his other stories, Potter uncovered evidence that called into question the handling by authorities of a 1975 murder of an American Indian activist and the 2004 suicides of two Army privates. Potter's articles are hard to put down. They're beautifully written, ambitious in intent, and-most of all-fearless in their pursuit of truth.

Potter, 33, is the executive editor of Denver's city magazine, 5280. Before joining 5280 in March 2004, Potter was a staff writer with Premiere magazine, Philadelphia magazine, and GQ. Potter has written often about crime, politics, the law and the military. This year Potter was a finalist for the Medill School of Journalism's John Bartlow Memorial Award for Public Interest Journalism and for two National Magazine Awards, in the categories of Public Interest and Reporting. Potter is also writer-at-large for Best Life and Men's Health magazines.

Elizabeth Rubin's articles about Iraq and Saudi Arabia are both hopeful and discouraging. Hopeful in that she tells the stories of two people trying to do good-a feisty young lawyer from Oklahoma working to advance human rights in Iraq and a former radical Islamist in Saudi Arabia trying to encourage critical thinking and democracy in that country. Discouraging in that she chronicles the cultural obstacles that face both protagonists-obstacles so difficult that, in the case of the Oklahoma lawyer, they result in her death. With her eye for detail and knack for convincing people to open up to her, Rubin provides us with insights into the way Iraqis and Saudis think about themselves and the West. Readers come away from her stories with a much richer sense of two cultures that Americans ignore at their own peril.

Rubin is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. She has traveled extensively writing about Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Russia, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans. Her stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Harper's, and The New Yorker. She is currently a 2005 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.