Arthur Ross Media Award

Arthur Ross Media Award
for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis on Foreign Affairs

 

The American Academy of Diplomacy annually honors one outstanding reporter and one distinguished commentator with its two Arthur Ross Awards for Distinguished Reporting Analysis on Foreign Affairs. The awards, endowed by and given in honor of the late Arthur Ross, seek to recognize individuals or groups of individuals (e.g., a news bureau) whose reporting and analysis on diplomacy and foreign affairs is making a singular contribution to public understanding of the critical role played by diplomacy in the furtherance of America’s foreign policy interests.

One award is given to a journalist/reporter and another to a commentator/columnist. Each award includes a cash stipend of $5,000. The awards are customarily presented at the Academy’s Annual Awards Luncheon ceremony in the Benjamin Franklin Room at the US Department of State in the late fall/early winter. Each award recipient and one other person will be guests of the Academy at the Luncheon.

Criteria for Selection

– Nominees must be U.S. citizens who work/reside anywhere, either in the United States or abroad.

– The work of the nominees must be making a singular contribution to public understanding of foreign
affairs or the critical role played by diplomacy in the furtherance of America’s foreign policy interests.

– Nominees can come from print or electronic publications.

– Nominees can be in one of two categories: Reporter/Journalist category or Commentator category.

– Nominees in the Commentator category can include columnists, editorial writers, cartoonists, or commentators.

Note: While the above are the formal criteria, the Academy is particularly looking for nominees who have not yet been honored with other major journalism awards and who are “on the way up;” this includes individuals from any part of the US or on assignment abroad (including conflict zones).

Submission Instructions 

  • Nominations are welcome and encouraged from the nominees’ media outlets, editors, colleagues, or readers. No self-nominations will be accepted.
  • Nominations must include a brief bio, a nominating statement (500 words max), and links to at least three examples of the nominee’s work (most recent samples would be preferred).
  • Nominations must be submitted via the online nomination form here.

Deadline

Complete nominations are due by 11:59 PM EDT on Wednesday, September 15, 2021. Incomplete nominations will not be considered.

Selection

Nominations are reviewed and recommendations made by the American Academy of Diplomacy Media Award committee; the American Academy of Diplomacy President also serves as a non-voting, ex-officio member.

Additional details about the 2021 call for entries can be found here: 2021 Arthur Ross Media Award.

 

History of Arthur Ross Media Award Recipients

To access an extended list of previous award winners, click here.

 

Robert Hunter (right), chair of the Media Award Committee, presents the 2017 Arthur Ross Media Award to Jonathan Landay (left) during the Annual Luncheon

Arthur Ross

The Academy’s Ross Media Awards are given in honor of the late Arthur Ross and endowed by the Ross Foundation.

 

Recipient

Nick Schifrin

Reporter

Recipient of the 2020 Arthur Ross Media Award in the Reporting category

 

Nick Schifrin is the foreign affairs and defense correspondent for PBS NewsHour, based in Washington, D.C. He leads NewsHour’s foreign reporting and has created week-long, in-depth series for NewsHour from China, Russia, Ukraine, Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Cuba, Mexico, and the Baltics. The PBS NewsHour series “Inside Putin’s Russia” won a 2018 Peabody Award and the National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence.

Prior to PBS NewsHour, Schifrin was Al Jazeera America’s Middle East correspondent, based in Jerusalem. He led the channel’s coverage of the 2014 war in Gaza. He reported extensively on the Syrian war from Syria’s Turkish, Lebanese and Jordanian borders. And he arrived in Ukraine as violence peaked in Kiev and reported on the conflict in and annexation of Crimea. He won an Overseas Press Club award for his Gaza coverage and a National Headliners Award for his Ukraine coverage.

From 2008-2012, Schifrin served as the ABC News correspondent in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2011 he was one of the first journalists to arrive in Abbottabad, Pakistan after Osama bin Laden’s death and delivered one of the year’s biggest exclusives: the first video from inside bin Laden’s compound. His reporting helped ABC News win an Edward R. Murrow award for its bin Laden coverage. He ran the Islamabad and Kabul bureaus for nearly four years, beginning at age 28.

Schifrin is a visiting fellow at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, where he lectures and teaches a foreign policy class. He is also a Council on Foreign Relations term member and an Overseas Press Club Foundation board member. He has a Master of International Public Policy degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), with a concentration in Strategic Studies.

Recipient

Nicholas Kristof

Columnist

Recipient of the 2020 Arthur Ross Media Award in the Commentator category

 

Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times since 2001, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who writes op-ed columns that appear twice a week.

Mr. Kristof grew up on a sheep and cherry farm near Yamhill, Oregon. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and then studied law at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, graduating with first class honors. He later studied Arabic in Cairo and Chinese in Taipei. Mr. Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to more than 150 countries, plus all 50 states, every Chinese province and every country on the African continent. During his travels, he has had unpleasant experiences with malaria, mobs, warlords and an African airplane crash.

After joining The New York Times in 1984, initially covering economics, he served as a Times correspondent in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. He also covered presidential politics and is the author of the chapter on President George W. Bush in the reference book “The Presidents.” He later was Associate Managing Editor of the Times for Sunday editions.

In 1990 Mr. Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, then a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China. They were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism. Mr. Kristof won a second Pulitzer in 2006, for what the judges called “his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur.”

Kristof has also won the George Polk Award, the Overseas Press Club award, the Michael Kelly award, the Online News Association award and the American Society of Newspaper Editors award. He has won various humanitarian awards including the Anne Frank Award, the Jan Karski award, and in 2016 was named by the U.N. as a “hero in the global campaign against violent extremism.” Mr. Kristof was the first blogger on The New York Times Web site, the first to contribute a video to The Times website, and the first to file on the Times Snapchat account. A documentary about him, “Reporter,” was executive-produced by Ben Affleck and aired on HBO.

In his column, Mr. Kristof was an early opponent of the Iraq war, and among the first to raise doubts about WMD in Iraq and about losing ground in Afghanistan. His columns often focused on health, poverty, human trafficking, women’s rights and social justice.

Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn are authors of the best-selling books “Tightrope,” “A Path Appears,” “Half the Sky,” “Thunder from the East,” and “China Wakes.” Mr. Kristof has been a member of the boards of Harvard University and The American Association of Rhodes Scholars. He and Ms. WuDunn are the parents of Gregory, Geoffrey and Caroline. Mr. Kristof enjoys running, and he backpacked from Mexico to Canada with his daughter on the Pacific Crest Trail. He enjoys having his Chinese and Japanese corrected by his children.

Recipients

See All