Bankrate.com’s Hamrick receives NPC’s Cosgrove Award

Mark Hamrick, the Washington bureau chief for Bankrate.com, has received the Cosgrove Award from the National Press Club.

The award is named for past president John Cosgrove, who is 96 is still a lively participant in Club activities. He was at the reception Wednesday evening where this award was announced.

Cosgrove was president of the Press Club in 1961. John F. Kennedy attended his inaugural dinner and wished him well. Press Club presidents serve for one year but often give a full lifetime of service thereafter.

In 2008 president Sylvia Smith of the Ft. Wayne Journal-Gazette, who was herself grateful for the help of past presidents and particularly that of Cosgrove, decided to establish an annual award to honor former presidents for their outstanding service during the year.

Hamrick, who is a Society of American Business Editors and Writers board member, was with the Associated Press when he was president in 2011.

He is the chair of the Club’s broadcast committee, which meets monthly and creates outstanding programming for the Club. Hamrick also serves on the board’s non-profit, the National Press Club Journalism Institute. He was an active member of a committee that led the effort to bring the Club’s historic Norman Rockwell Painting to auction where it received a price of more than $11 million.

Hamrick moved to Bankrate in January 2013 after leading business news for The Associated Press broadcast unit, based in Washington, for nearly 20 years.