09/08/2008

AP Press Release

AP names nine winners of its Gramling Awards for staff excellence

NEW YORK -- The Associated Press has named nine members of its global staff as winners of its 2008 Oliver S. Gramling Awards for excellence.

"Our high-level global photography, our innovation in covering the historic U.S. presidential primary and caucus season and our ambitious regionalization operation are all well-represented among the winners, reflecting the breadth and depth of unsung staff excellence that the program was first created to honor a decade and a-half ago," AP President and CEO Tom Curley said.

The honorees also include two staffers, continents apart, who overcame great adversity in their personal lives to bring to their AP colleagues an unmatched level of spirit and inspiration on a daily basis, in the best tradition of the Gramling program and AP's rich history of exceptional people worldwide.

The awards, established in 1994, are given annually to staff members whose work and initiative contribute significantly to the news report and to overall AP operations.

The awards are named after Oliver S. Gramling, the AP newsman and executive who is credited with developing AP's first radio wire in 1941. Gramling bequeathed his estate to the AP when he died in 1992, directing that it be used for AP staff members nominated for excellence by their colleagues.

A committee of AP bureau and department managers selected the winners.

This year's winners:

-- $10,000 Gramling Journalism Awards: Tokyo-based chief Asia photographer David Guttenfelder, for immersing himself in every story he covers in a way that makes the world pay attention to his photos whether they're from a conflict zone or not; Washington, D.C.-based journalist Stephen Ohlemacher, whose tracking of delegates for the most open and competitive U.S. presidential nominating process in history made AP the gold standard against which all other delegate-tracking operations have been measured.

-- $10,000 Gramling Achievement Awards: Michael Giarrusso, Atlanta-based Director of State News/South, for leading the successful launch of the South Desk as part of AP's U.S. regionalization strategy, one of the most ambitious restructurings of AP's news operations ever; New York-based Manager of Election Systems Development Margaret Lichtenberg, for coordinating the technology team that designed and built an alternative delegate allocation system, giving AP a major competitive edge in reporting the U.S. presidential delegate race.

-- $3,000 Gramling Spirit Awards: Aroun Deen, a mailroom clerk in New York who fled Sierra Leone in 1999 because of death threats related to his work as a reporter and producer and who aspires to be a journalist again. Since joining AP in 2007 in the United States, he has inspired the staff at headquarters on a daily basis with his sense of humor and dedication while also going to school and working to support his family; Karim Jassim, for his devotion and dedication to the AP while overcoming family tragedies -- his wife died from a heart attack after his son was kidnapped -- since the start of the Iraq war. His official titles as assistant office manager, photos assignments editor and accountant in Baghdad, combined with his unofficial role as a mentor and leader, led many to cite him as a paramount reason for AP Baghdad's success.

-- $3,000 Gramling Scholarship Awards: Jackie Bsharah, Elizabeth Kennedy and Lefteris Pitarakis. Bsharah, an AP Radio journalist touted by her colleagues as a natural motivator and organizer, is formally studying organizational development to hone her broadcast supervisory skills. Kennedy, acting bureau chief for East Africa, is targeting advanced one-on-one French-language immersion to enhance her interviewing expertise. Pitarakis, a London-based photojournalist who has been telling the story of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the Middle East, is taking on training in videography to complement his photography skillset.

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Contact: Jack Stokes, AP Corporate Communications, 212.621.1720 or jstokes@ap.org