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N&O Newsroom
Good Work Award

Month Winner
August 1998 Thad Ogburn
July 1998 Laurie Willis
June 1998 Anne Saker
May 1998 Joe Dew
April 1998 Rob Christensen
March 1998 Ken Cartner
February 1998 Teresa Kriegsman
January 1998 Joyce Clark Hicks and David Raynor
December 1997 Bill Krueger and Pat Stith
November 1997 Doug Donovan and Amanda Garrett
October 1997 Van Denton
September 1997 Pam Nelson
August 1997 Tim Stevens & Norm Cloutier
July 1997 Damon Cain
June 1997 Todd Silberman


August 1998 - Thad Ogburn

Will Sutton presented the award to Thad:

Generally, when we think of good work we think of good newspaper work. Day after day, week after week, we look for a special story, a special photo, a well-written headline that captures the essence of the best we have to offer readers.

Then there's the work that doesn't hit our pages, work that really matters, work that, when done well, results in later payoffs. This is investment work. This is nurturing work. This is the work of planting seedlings with the hope, the dream of a crop blossoming later.

Such was the work of News Editor Thad Ogburn when he and a committee of newsroom staffers won over the hearts of six high school journalists, convincing them that they really should consider newspapers a valuable career option.

Picking up the task in late spring, Thad came through, quickly grasping the focus of the mission, understanding the tight timeframe to plan and implement a summer program and organizing the troops necessary to pull it off.

The goal was to expand on last year's two-day summer minority high school program, to make it better and to expose students to more. Last year's students said they enjoyed the experience but it was not enough. Under Thad's leadership, the high school summer workshop committee decided to be truly ambitious, allowing the students to be exposed to research, reporting, design, photography, graphics and copy editing.

Listen to Teresa Leonard: "This would have been a difficult assignment at any time, but there were the added obstacles of a late start (just a few weeks before school was out) and strained schedules (many of the top managers were away one or more days during the workshop). Thad was able to secure support from all corners of the newsroom as he asked us to spend time with these kids, and the workshop participants came away with a good understanding of all aspects of putting out a newspaper. It was a wonderful experience for the students and sparked in several of them a serious interest in journalism."

You may have seen the pages the students produced hanging on the wall on the second and third floors of the Raleigh building. There's some good student work there. There's wonderful first-time work, and even some work we'd be proud to publish.

Thanks to Thad's high energy, focus on the task and attention to detail, these budding journalists from Enloe, Mary Phillips, Jordan and South Johnston high schools had a productive three days learning about the rigors of daily journalism.

Thanks to Thad's organization and commitment to sow seeds now, we expect them to be sitting in some of these desks in a few years as The Ogburn Crop begins to blossom.


July 1998 - Laurie Willis

Here's what Ned Barnett said in presenting the award to Laurie:

She is a G.A. who makes those letters mean: Go Anywhere, Get Anything and Give All. But they don't always mean Good Attitude. Sometimes they mean Get Away. Other times, when faced with a really dumb assignment, they stand for God Almighty!

That G.A. is Laurie Willis, winner of the GWA -- the good work award. Laurie is not an institutional reporter. Her stories don't have bullets -- they're about bullets. And they're about bad guys, and hurt little kids, auto accidents and funerals, hot weather and cold. She writes about what happened yesterday with an energy and thoroughness that makes people want to buy the paper tomorrow.

Anyone who has sat next to Laurie, or any editor who's been the brunt of one of her eye rolling, heading shaking God Almighties, know Laurie isn't afraid to tell it like she feels it. But the feelings she cares about most aren't her own, but others. She has a knack for dealing with victims, to drawing out the grief-stricken, for winning and keeping sources in the skeptical ranks of cops and prosecutors.

All that paid off in the case of a young thief beaten to death after stealing $130 from a Food Lion store. Laurie listened to his parents, sought out his friends, won the confidence of prosecutors and finally forced a grand jury to take a second look at its no bill in the case.

That was good work. We look forward to more of it.


June 1998 - Anne Saker

Here's what Jane Ruffin said in presenting the award to Anne:

Old-timey courtrooms were large places, built to handle the crowds who would turn up when a murderer or robber went on trial. New courtrooms are tiny for a reason. No one has time to sit in court anymore. Step into a Superior Courtroom today, and you might find a cluster of family members making up the audience. And that's it -- except perhaps for a reporter or two.

That means the reporter often is the public's sole watchdog in the courtroom, soaking up a direct and immediate view of government at work. It's possible to write a full account of a trial -- what the witness said, what the defendant did, what the jury decided -- and consider the job done. But outstanding reporters go beyond that to tell readers when justice breaks down.

This is what Anne Saker did in her reporting on the case of Terence Garner. She went after the story in her own Anne way. She interviewed people in jail and in prison. She went to lawyers' offices, to the courthouse, to sheriff's departments. She faced down a judge, and she visited housing projects. Her spirited telephone interviews entertained those of us within earshot. And she impressed us with the range of her vocabulary.

In the end, she showed how in the case of Terence Garner, justice broke down.

We don't know yet how things will turn out. We still can't say for sure that Garner is innocent. But Anne's reporting raised a reasonable doubt, to say the least.

This was good, old-fashioned journalism by a beat reporter who went beyond the obvious. At a time when some are giving us reasons to be ashamed of our profession, stories like this make us feel proud. Good work, Anne.


May 1998 - Joe Dew

Here's what Ned Barnett said in presenting the award to Joe:

Today we notice Joe Dew because he notices so much else. He sees needs and meets them, sees good work and commends it, sees news and chases it.

In the spring, Joe was sent to Durham to "fill in" as editor for two months. It turned into twice that long. But through the long and unertain interim period, Joe has remained a source of steady judgement, good cheer and an occasional big shoulder to cry on. His signature as leader has been a wall festooned with the week's papers with red circles highlighting the good work of his staff. He has made a priority what reporters crave, consistent and unvarnished feedback. Joe is a reporter of wide range and experience and he is aware of the challenges inherent in all sorts of stories. But he knows also that hard work is the best reporting technique. He's made that a steady expectation in Durham with obvious results.

Joe oversaw strong stories on Durham schools ranging from the school trip to Ghana to a full page Q&A with the superintendent. He guided through 1A reports on Durham crime fighting (or lack of it) and gaps in government hiring. He's added 3B special reports on budgets and the Durham police reorganization and he sharpened the issue reporting on government beats.

When it came to the question of giving Joe the good work award, one Durham reporter said: "He has my vote with both hands." Let's give him a hand with both of ours.


April 1998 - Rob Christensen

The Good Work Award for April goes to Rob Christensen for his work on the Senate race and the death of Terry Sanford. Here's what Pat Stith said in presenting the award:

Editors at this newspaper gather twice a day to plan next-day coverage, pitch stories for 1A and critique the paper. There is usually some criticism of our work. And some praise too, just about every day. Somebody will say they like this or that or the other. Sometimes someone else chimes in and, in effect, seconds the motion.

But when editors started talking about Rob Christensen's work on the Senate race and his coverage of the life and death of Terry Sanford, the praise sounded like a chorus.

They said his work on the Senate and Sanford stories was superior. They said he beat The Charlotte Observer like a tub. They said said his writing was sweet. They said Christensen knows North Carolina politics, and it shows.

On a couple of days, it felt like we were going to have a pep rally, and maybe run him for office. With voters in that room, Rob would have won in a landslide.

This is a reporter who has gotten better and better with each year. Now, when he's bad, he's pretty good. And when he's good, he's scary. This award is for excellent work. It was also beautiful work.


March 1998 - Ken Cartner

Here's what was said about Ken's win:

As we embrace new technologies and bring them to the newsroom, things are supposed to get easier. At least for you - the users. The work that takes place to implement changes happens behind the scenes and generally goes unnoticed. Recognition usually occurs only when things DON'T get easier or when we accidentally break something that used to work.

I'm glad the committee has chosen Ken to receive this award because he deserves recognition for all the hard work he has put in replacing grueling work on the agate desk with automated processes.

Don't worry, I won't bore you with the details of exactly how he did it. All you need to do is look at the agate page each morning. What you can't see in the ink on the page is the tremendous amount of work that goes into producing it every day. That work load has been made a lot lighter by Ken's dedicated efforts. And you can trust what you read to be more accurate because much of the manual preparation is now done automatically. The bottom line is a better product.

The job wasn't easy either. Most of the skills he used were self taught. You can buy the tools but somebody has to know how to use them. Many of us own collections of sophisticated tools, but we only use them to perform routine tasks - pound a nail here, turn a screw there (but you gotta love that cordless drill). Kenny took some tools and taught himself to be a craftsman, building things to make a tough job easier and an important product more accurate.


February 1998 - Teresa Kriegsman

The February award for Good Work was presented to Teresa Kriegsman. Damon Cain presented the award to Teresa and said: "What you are being recognized for is your work on the 1998 Winter Olympics, not only your exquisite design but also its extraordinary execution day after day, from the page one posters to the myriad pages in sports that made our exhaustive reports all the more compelling. Tirelessly, you pulled that all together and you saw it through.


January 1998 - David Raynor
January 1998 - Joyce Clark Hicks

Instead of a Good Work award and a Bold Idea award, the newsroom decided to award two Good Work awards for the month of January. The winners were Joyce Clark Hicks and David Raynor.

In presenting the award to Joyce, Felicia said, "If I were going to write a prescription for how to cover medicine in a real-life way, it would go something like this: Take one talented young reporter with a deeply rooted personal interest in the subject. Add a period of study early in her career that exposed her to veteran medical writers. For good measure, stir in several years of cityside reporting on deadline. Mix well, then combine with an editor who's also savvy about medical issues and a department that wants to make health coverage a priority. You'll get the kind of engaging, authoritative coverage that Joyce Clark Hicks is bringing to the Day section each week. Her work and professionalism enrich our newspaper."

Here's what Melanie said in presenting the award to David: "A new byline appeared on the front page of The News & Observer on a recent Sunday. Many of us know it was long overdue, because David Raynor has contributed to dozens of stories in his role as computer-assisted reporting coach in the news research department. He's endlessly patient, always enthusiastic and amazingly able to figure out how to extract valuable information from databases. He has coached, taught and held hands. He is, as one of his nominators said, "a little gem back there in news research... unsung."

Sperry Krueger wrote this about David: "David's work is always exemplary. In addition to teaching foxpro, tape-loading, 9-track, and other CAR skills to the CAR fellows and other reporters & editors, he does an incredible job maintaining and building the Money Machine, acquiring and keeping up with new databases, creating software applications and helping with computer assisted reporting."


December 1997 - Bill Krueger and Pat Stith

Bill Krueger and Pat Stith received the Good Work Award (with an assist from John Wagner and Wade Rawlins). Here's what Melanie said in presenting the award to Bill and Pat:

"Of the many good stories we've written in recent years, few have stuck in public memory as much as Bill Krueger's report in 1996 about a $3.5 million Department of Transporation payment to realtor Steve Stroud for land worth a fraction of that amount. Later, Bill reported on another DOT project that benefited influential people but had little apparent public value. That project in Chapel Hill, now dubbed Ram Road, and other tips raised a bigger question: How far did political favors and deal-making reach into the daily operations of DOT, a huge agency that spends $2.8 billion a year in tax money? In recent months, Bill and Pat Stith have dug into DOT and found some answers. DOT's top officials make deals often, maybe regularly. Bill and Pat broke the news about the most significant conflict-of-interest case on the state highway board, Odell Williamson's advocacy of DOT projects that benefited him and his family, and resulted in Williamson's immediate resignation as well as a criminal investigation. In the past month, our investigative team has broken stories showing how DOT highway administrator Larry Goode diverted safety money to political plum projects, and how politics has swayed decisions as basic as whether to allow access onto highways near major interchanges. Bill and Pat's investigation had to switch gears when news started breaking at DOT and our competition stepped up its coverage. They've worked many nights, weekends and long days to keep ahead of the story, and their coverage has continued to widen. Part of this recognition goes as well to John Wagner and Wade Rawlins, who are breaking news almost daily about DOT issues on their beats, and who dived in willingly and eagerly when news pushed the story into high gear over a weekend just before Christmas. The combined coverage has highlighted our paper during the past month. The good work award goes to Bill and Pat, but it reminds us again how much we profit when we all pull together.


November 1997 - Doug Donovan and Amanda Garrett

Here's what Charles Jeffries and Mike Yopp had to say in presenting the award to Doug and Amanda in Durham:

"The week before Durham City Manager Lamont Ewell was scheduled to release the names of the finalists in the Durham police chief search, City Hall reporter Doug Donovan sent out an exhaustive email describing what we needed to do to get the names first. He enlisted the aid of his podmate, police reporter Amanda Garrett, and the two set off on a quest. Ewell had steadfastly refused to divulge anything, even saving the names of the panelists who would interview the candidates up until the last few days before they would arrive in town. While Amanda browbeat her cop sources, Doug took to the phones to hound his City Hall sources. As his passionate pleas for information began to resonate through the Durham newsroom like a speech delivered at a journalist's convention, he evoked the most powerful force known to a reporter: "The public's right to know." It worked! He got the names and a standing ovation from his fellow reporters. Then he and Amanda burned up phone lines all over the country to get the lowdown on the four men and one woman who were bidding to become the Bull City's top cop. "


October 1997 - Van Denton

Managing Editor Melanie Sill said of Van, "It might help to think about this month's good work award in terms of a question: Can newspapers find new ways to engage readers in important issues? Our answer, thanks to the good work of Van Denton and the Q section he edits, is yes. Every Sunday since May 18, Q has taken readers into new terrain. Q has brought dozens of new voices into the paper, drawing upon the richness of our community. And while this has been one of our most successful team efforts, involving a number of important contributors each Sunday, Van has been the inspiration and guiding force."


September 1997 - Pam Nelson

October's Outstanding Work award went to Pam Nelson. Mike Yopp presented the award to Pam, noting the many hours she puts in each day as day news editor and in most any other area where she is needed. Jim Carr added, "The first weeks that we had to absorb the business section copy-editing workload, Pam stayed hours longer than she should have, doing much of the work herself. When we were without a weekend editor, Pam did it. When there was no one to fill in as wire editor, Pam did it. When we were short on the rim, Pam worked the rim. If this newspaper had to pay Pam by the hour, it couldn't afford her. And if she ever left, it would take three people to replace her."


August 1997 - Tim Stevens and Norm Cloutier

Here's what Anders had to say about the winners:

Tim Stevens and Norm Cloutier are both true forces in their departments. They are joint winners, recognized for their contributions to the NCHometeam Web site that we launched last week to what appears to be immediate success. Norm and Tim deserv this recognition for contributions that extend far beyond this special project, and that's one of the things that stand out about their work.


July 1997 - Damon Cain

Here's what Melanie said about Damon:

People used to think good-looking papers couldn't be smart. Damon Cain proves them wrong on a consistent basis. His work on the Driving Forces series stands out even among his other notable projects -- Boss Hog, Sold Down the River and the Hogan Farm series, to name a few. Damon's mantra is familiar to those who work with him: No, not the one about the Giants baseball team, the one about design. As he says over and over, content is what counts, and good design is built on strong content. That's why he was asked to take a leadership role in Driving Forces. As co-director of the project, he helped guide the reporting and content development, concentrating on the visual aspects of that reporting. But of course, what you do with the content also counts. And Damon's news-driven, crisp design captured the compelling elements of Sally, Stuart, Matthew and Lynn's reporting and Gary's photography. The series was collaborative, driven by news. But without going into every detain, the design clearly had a signature. And that signature was Damon's.

This kind of work takes many, many hours. And if it wasn't enough to have produced a five-part series, Damon was greeted the following week with another challenge: Preparing the pages for the reprint.

For his tireless effort, imagination, collaborative spirit and leadership -- and most of all, for the excellent work that resulted from those elements -- we're happy to give the good work award to Damon Cain, director of news design.


June 1997 - Todd Silberman

Much is made about the variety offered by the news business, but what makes for the best reporters are the things that never vary: a commitment to accuracy, a dedication to the reader and willingness to work hard every day. These are the qualities that define Todd Silberman.

Since arriving at The N&O in 1992, Todd has covered Wake County schools with a quiet persistence and unrelenting focus that has made him a consummate beat reporter. Along with writing talent and reporting skills, he brings to his reporting a deep knowledge of the people, the issues and the history involved in Wake Schools. And despite mighty efforts to shake him -- from early morning phone calls from a bellowing school board chairman to the late night roar of Hurrican Fran -- Todd has stayed on top of his beat.

On any subject, from a school page feature to a Sunday centerpiece, Todd can be counted on to deliver a lucid, balanced and thoroughly reported story. And he delivers a lot of them. Since 1995, he has put some 400 stories in the newspaper. In the process he had built The N&O's reputation for first class coverage of Wake Schools from the blackboard to the school board. His is the stuff of which a great regional newspaper is made.