Wall Street Journal editor in chief Matt Murray sent out the following announcement on Thursday:
Dear All:
We were incredibly proud this week to gather in New York and take a moment to announce and applaud the newsroom’s 11 One Award winners. The winners come from all corners of the Journal, around the world. Happily, many of them were able to call in to participate. But I want to make sure all of you get the news about our winners and have the chance to celebrate and thank them for their outstanding work.
As a reminder, the One Awards are the biggest employee rewards that Dow Jones offers. They are granted based on nominations from colleagues, not from executives or department leaders, which make them especially noteworthy.
The One Awards come in three tiers. In Tier 3, receiving $3,750 each, we had five winners:
Dan Frosch, reporter, Dallas, for his help managing the West Coast bureau when it was between managers. Not only did he work closely with the whole group, to great results, but he also covered the Santa Fe school shooting for us and, on top of that, managed to produce a detailed leder on Hurricane Harvey’s longer-term impact on Houston.
Dov Friedman, technical director. Dov works almost entirely behind the scenes but you’ll likely recognize his most recent work: The rebuild of the college-rankings interactive, and the image grid, which was recently used for Off Duty’s Work issue and to gather up our coverage of the 10-year anniversary of the financial crisis. This type of work often goes unnoticed but is critical to making our visual journalism more digital.
Lydia Serota, our mobile editor. Lydia’s presence in this newly reconstituted group has transformed the team into a robust and vital presence in the newsroom. She has taken a start-up approach, encouraging editors, designers, product developers and engineers to collaborate and improve our digital and editing tools. This means we can more regularly showcase strong visuals on the app and stay nimble for breaking news.
Amrith Ramkumar, markets reporter. We sometimes overlook the efforts of those who make sure that we meet all of our many responsibilities, but we cannot do the job without them. Amrith is one of those, handling breaking news, elevated spot coverage, interactive graphics and the markets newsletter. His willingness to step into the breach has been critical to the success of the whole markets team.
Bradley Hope, reporter, London, for his excellent reporting on 1MDB, his definitive profile of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and the Price of Climate, a global warming series he spearheaded. Perhaps just as important, Bradley’s major stories this year all involved collaborating with his colleagues in other regions and specialties, which sets an example about the best of Journal culture.
In Tier 2, we have four newsroom winners, each receiving $7,500. They are:
Liz Hoffman. Liz’s stories, her nominator wrote, “are regularly laced with hard-to-get, fly-on-the-wall details that differentiate WSJ’s coverage and keep readers hooked.” In pursuing her beat, Liz sets a model of energy and drive that we need more of in this newsroom.
Doug Macmillan in San Francisco. Doug has been killing it on the Google beat this year, with a series of agenda-setting scoops, especially around Google’s privacy practices, that were the results of months of tenacious and thoughtful reporting. Doug has also been a model for collaboration in the San Fran newsroom; he organizes bureau meetings and gets reporters together off-deadline to exchange ideas and learn from one another.
Josh Chin from our Beijing bureau. He was nominated for his extensive reporting on China’s surveillance apparatus. Beyond going to great lengths for these stories, Josh also has been innovative, seeking out and executing on the strongest visual aspects of the stories he’s reporting.
Jonathan Cheng, our South Korea bureau chief. Jonathan’s coverage of the recent changes in North Korea has been fantastic; he was central to almost all our biggest stories this year on the nuclear talks and detente between Washington and Pyongyang. Jon’s nominator said, “At times it has seemed as though Jon has worked 27 hours a day.” And I’m sure it feels that way to him, especially right now, since it’s 1 a.m. in Seoul, where he is.
As for Tier 1, no one will be surprised to know that our twinners, receiving $15,000 each, were Michael Rothfeld and Joe Palazzolo, for their groundbreaking and dogged work on the Michael Cohen story.
The colleague who nominated Michael and Joe said, “The coverage has been unimpeachable. In an era of alleged ‘fake news,’ these stories have been accurate and played right down the middle.” Their work, which also has drawn in a number of talented reporters and editors around the organization, has had great resonance and import.
It is gratifying for all of us to honor these exceptional journalists and people, who exemplify the truly top-tier quality of colleagues across The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones. Please join me in congratulating them all–and remind them that if the bar is open, they’re buying.
Matt
