More than 350 newsmakers, journalists and nonprofit leaders attended the 2010 Ridenhour Prizes, held on April 14 at the National Press Club. The winners were Matthew Hoh (Prize for Truth-Telling), Joe Sacco (Book Prize) and the late Howard Zinn (Courage Prize). Hoh won for his courageous public act of resignation as a State Department official in Afghanistan, in protest of U.S. foreign policy. Sacco won for his war-reportage comic, Footnotes in Gaza, which examined the influence of a historic injustice on present day Palestine. And Zinn, who passed away in January, a mere week after accepting the honor, won for his determination to showcase the hidden heroes of social movements throughout history, his refusal to accept the history of only the powerful and victorious and his steadfast belief in the potential for a better world.

Seymour Hersh, a previous Courage Prize recipient, introduced Matt Hoh. "If you don't do anything else this week or today, read the letter that Matthew Hoh wrote in his resignation. As a journalist who deals in the world of unnamed sources about which there's been so much criticism," Hersh said, "what somebody like Matthew Hoh does by going public, is he adds authenticity to our anonymous sources. He says that we're not living in a world, a cocoon of our own imagination, that there are problems there." David Marash, who introduced Sacco, said, "Joe Sacco is a multimedia explosion unto himself. He's a novelist. He's a cartoonist. He is a journalist. And he is a historian. He goes to chronicle and capture the present, but he understands that the past is never absent. And his message and his techniques are defining not only the future of the profession of journalism, but in many ways the future of the world." Bernice Johnson Reagon, a former student of Zinn's from Spelman College in Atlanta, shared warm memories of her teacher and mentor. "Howard Zinn was in Albany, Georgia, in December, 1961, when I got out of jail," she said. He witnessed so many important events of the struggle to end racial segregation, and he wrote about them in his book, The New Abolitionist, and Reagon recognized the stories and people of the struggle he depicted. "Howard Zinn dared to suggest," she added, "that right with any documentary evidence, you must hear from most of the people who are impacted by the subject you are studying.... They must share the pages."

Also in attendance were former prizewinners Rick Piltz, Tom Tamm, Joe Wilson, Dan Ellsberg and Seymour Hersh.

Watch the Ron Ridenhour Tribute Video

Anthony Shadid on Bombings in Baghdad
Ridenhour Book Prize recipient Anthony Shadid reports for The New York Times on the latest round of bombings in Iraq's capital city. "The sounds echoed Tuesday through Investigations Square, mundane in their familiarity and poignant in their anguish. Glass shattered by a suicide bombing sounded like tinny chimes as vendors swept their sidewalks. Condolences in Arabic were murmured in the numbed aftermath of chaos. Down the street, dominoes clacked as Ali Hassan played on a table, perched before a store shorn of its facade. 'What else can I do?' he asked. 'Where else should I go?'" Shadid writes. The reporter won the Ridenhour Book Prize in 2006 for his  account of everyday Iraqis caught in the crossfire of international conflict, Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War.

Jane Mayer Wins More Book Prizes for The Dark Side
Jane Mayer, recipient of the 2009 Book Prize for The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, is also the winner of the Lukas Prize Project Award for Exceptional Works of Nonfiction, the Goldsmith Book Prize, the Helen Bernstein Award from the New York Public Library and the Edward Weintal Prize for International Reporting. The Lukas Prizes recognize excellence in nonfiction writing that exemplifies literary grace and commitment to serious research and social concern. The Goldsmith Book Prize is awarded to the trade and academic book published in the last year that best fulfills the objective of improving government through an examination of the intersection between press, politics, and public policy. The New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism honors an outstanding journalist whose book has drawn public attention to important current issues or events. The Edward Weintal Prize is awarded by Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD). Selected for her outstanding reporting and analysis over the past year, Paula R. Newberg, Marshall B. Coyne Director of the ISD said that "Jane Mayer's investigative reporting has taken the world of U.S. diplomacy back to the fundamental relationships between transparency and secrecy within the U.S. government."

Nick Turse Wins James Aronson Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship
Nick Turse, the 2009 recipient of a special Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction for his Nation article, "A My Lai A Month," has also won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The James Aronson Award is presented annually to "journalism that measures business, governmental and social affairs against clear ideals of the common good." Turse was one of 180 to win a Guggenheim Fellowship, which are designed to "assist research and artistic creation." Read more...

Thomas Tamm Speaks at Panel Hosted by the Government Accountability Project
Former Justice Department lawyer Thomas Tamm, recipient of the 2009 Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling, was on a March 10 panel discussion hosted by Ridenhour Prizes partner, the Government Accountability Project (GAP). The panel, part of the National Whistleblower Assembly conference, examined the past, current, and future state of the controversy surrounding the warrantless wiretapping scandal. In his first public speaking appearance, Tamm, the subject of a recent Newsweek cover story, discussed his experience of working in the Justice Department unit handling wiretaps of suspected terrorists and spies when he stumbled upon the existence of the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, which deliberately circumvented the FISA Court. AlterNet published a lengthy article on Tamm, and The Guardian's Michael Tomasky called him "a great American." Read more...

Bob Herbert on the Plight of American Working Families
In his recent New York Times column, 2009 recipient of the Ridenhour Courage Prize Bob Herbert skewered the conservatives and public officials responsible for the economic crisis. In his lead paragraph, he wrote, "Working families were in deep trouble long before this megarecession hit. But too many of the public officials who should have been looking out for the middle class and the poor were part of the reckless and shockingly shortsighted alliance of conservatives and corporate leaders that rigged the economy in favor of the rich and ultimately brought it down completely." You can read Bob Herbert's remarks on the occasion of his acceptance of the 2009 Courage Prize on The Huffington Post. Read more...

Nominations for both the 2010 Truth-Telling Prize and the Book Prize are now closed.

For more information, call Taya Kitman at 212-822-0252 or Jayati Vora at 212-822-0269