April 8, 1998 Contact: Tim Stephens (408/459-4352); stephens@cats.ucsc.edu

LAURIE GARRETT WINS COVETED POLK AWARD

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA­UC Santa Cruz alumna Laurie Garrett, a science and medical reporter for Newsday, was one of 13 journalists awarded a prestigious Polk Award for 1997. The awards were announced in March and will be formally presented on April 15 in New York City.

Garrett won the foreign reporting award for her 25-part series on tuberculosis and AIDS in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. The Polk Award comes on the heels of Garrett's 1996 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism for her reporting on the Ebola virus outbreak in Zaire.

Garrett earned a B.A. in biology at UCSC in 1975 and spent eight years as a science correspondent at National Public Radio. She has worked at Newsday since 1988. In February 1996, she received the Alumni Achievement Award from UCSC's Alumni Association in recognition of her career accomplishments.

The Polk Awards, administered by Long Island University, recognize excellence in reporting and are among the most valued honors in journalism. They were established in 1949 in memory of CBS news correspondent George Polk, who was killed while covering the Greek Civil War.

This news release is also available on the World Wide Web at UCSC's "Services for Journalists" site (http://www.ucsc.edu/news/journalist).

Press Releases Home | Search Press Releases | Press Release Archive | Services for Journalists

Maintained by:pioweb@cats.ucsc.edu