Fry wins WERT Prize from Columbia

Erika Fry

The Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia Journalism School announced Wednesday that a reporter from Fortune won the WERT Prize for Outstanding Global Business Reporting by a female journalist.

Erika Fry, a senior writer for Fortune, has won the 2020 WERT Prize for her piece “Epidemic of Fear(link is external),” charting the years-long tragic course of a vaccine against dengue fever.

“‘Epidemic of Fear,’ by Erika Fry reads almost like a movie screenplay,” said committee member Kimi Yoshino, Los Angeles Times managing editor. “I was riveted by every paragraph until the end It’s masterfully written and meticulously reported.”

The WERT Prize honors excellence in comprehensively reported business journalism by a woman that fosters a greater understanding of global business.

The WERT Prize was established in 2018 and is funded by a bequest made by the Women’s Economic Round Table and support from the Muriel F. Siebert Foundation and the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.