Without exception, the recipients of the 2014 Society of Professional Journalists Awards exemplify the real deal. On major and minor platforms, in print and broadcast and online media, as staff or freelance/independent, they pursued issues they considered important, undertook investigations that sometimes lasted for months, often made enemies, but challenged authority, separated hard fact from self-serving fiction, and spoke truth to power. The award to us takes it as a given that we belong among them, as equals and colleagues. Speaking for the team, we cherish that association above all. […]
|
|
In the last analysis, whether working in black & white in the urban social environment or isolating the particulars of a flower or shell insect in their distinctive coloration, Feinstein is still showing us a world filtered through his own inimitable sensibility. Animated by the same spirit, the works of his earlier years and these more recent projects actively enrich and amplify each other. A profound awe in the presence of living things manifests itself in all his pictures. […] Capa’s two photos have become iconic images symbolizing inertia, fear and even the failure of nerve of the common soldier on the beaches of Normandy. What a travesty that these men who made decisive contributions to the success of the campaign, despite every danger and hindrance, should have become poster boys for lack of resolve under fire. And all as the result of a caption that told the wrong story. […] Since Capa himself provided no notes for his D-Day images, captioning them was left to those who had never witnessed an amphibious assault, much less the Omaha Beach landings. When LIFE’s editors added a caption that was accurate in the macro sense — but wholly inaccurate for that particular scene — they condemned this photo to misreading for decades to come. […] The Metropolitan Museum has behaved like the latter in regard to photography, with the result that it has become so irrelevant and useless that it is in imminent danger of becoming completely divorced from the living medium. Unless the museum decides to take immediate steps to rectify this, it might do well to consider the possibility of turning its holdings over to any one of several other institutions which would be capable of treating them with the respect they deserve — and proud to do so as well. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |