Fraters Libertas

And the Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence Goes to...

The folks at Knight Ridder have announced the names of major award winners:

Knight Ridder (NYSE: KRI) today announced the winners in its nineteenth annual James K. Batten Excellence Awards competition, designed to recognize and celebrate the successes of Knight Ridder people. The winners will be honored at a special dinner hosted by Chairman and CEO Tony Ridder on Oct. 31 in San Jose. The winners will receive a total of $37,500 in prize money.

The name of the honoree taking home the big hardware should be quite familiar to our regular readers (referenced here, here, here, here, and here).

The top prize, the John S. Knight Gold Medal, was awarded to Knight Ridder Cairo Bureau Chief Hannah Allam, who served nearly two years as head of the Baghdad Bureau. Knight Ridder Chairman and CEO Tony Ridder said, "Hannah Allam, all of 28 years old, is a genuine prodigy -- a journalist of outstanding accomplishment and a leader who, by her courage, compassion, commitment and talent, is an inspiration to the many others working with her. As a reporter from Iraq in the summer of 2003, and our Baghdad bureau chief from December 2003 until just recently, she has won the admiration of the entire press corps for the quality of her coverage. "She assembled a remarkable staff of Americans, British and Iraqi (including Sunnis and Shiites) who regularly out-report and out-write the competition. She has also, as her nomination said, 'mastered challenges few of us will ever face. She has run down a street with bullets pinging off the pavement to cover the siege of a mosque. She has felt the concussion from a roadside bomb. She saved a colleague from assassins. She has comforted sobbing employees grieving the loss of a staffer who drove into an intersection where a military operation was under way and was killed by an American bullet.'

Woah, back it up, back it up. Beep, beep, beep. American bullet? Funny, I didn't happen to catch where the "bullets pinging off the pavement" came from, the origin of the "concussion from a roadside bomb", or the affiliation of the "assassins" that she saved a colleague from. Let me give it a shot:

"terrorist bullets pinging off the pavement"

"concussion from an insurgent roadside bomb."

"She saved a colleague from Al Qaeda assassins."

Apparently to Knight Ridder CEO Tony Ridder, these are just natural events that occur in Iraq, much like the weather. But when a staffer is ACCIDENTALLY killed when he is unfortunate enought to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, it requires a precise identification the source of the bullet. I'm sure that if the staffer had been accidentally shot by Iraqi Army units, he would have said "killed by an Iraqi bullet." Yeah, right.

More on Goddess Hannah:

"It is rare that this award goes to someone without a long record of achievement within the company. In Hannah's case, she has squeezed into two years what many others don't experience in a lifetime. John S. Knight would be very proud." "Hannah is a talented reporter and a stalwart leader," the jury said. "She has accomplished so much, and she has so much heart as well. She's a Mozart, a Beethoven -- she's a prodigy."

At least the jury was restrained and measured in their praise. You wouldn't want these things to be too over the top as to inspire ridicule. Right?

A journalistic prodigy with well-manicured nails and a hell of Karaoke singer to boot. She really is the complete package of outstanding achievement in the field excellence.