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George Polk Awards

George Polk Awards
The George Polk Awards are conferred annually to honor special achievement in journalism. They were established by Long Island University in 1949 to commemorate Polk, a CBS correspondent murdered the year before while covering the Greek civil war. Winners are chosen from newspapers, magazines, television, radio and online news organizations. Judges place a premium on investigative and enterprise work that is original, requires digging and resourcefulness, and brings results. Some of the most respected names in journalism have won Polk Awards, including Edward R. Murrow, Christiane Amanpour, Carl Bernstein, David Halberstam, Gay Talese, Fred Friendly, I.F. Stone, Morley Safer, Joseph Lelyveld, Anthony Lukas and Walter Cronkite. The awards are presented each spring at a luncheon in Manhattan and are preceded the night before by the Polk Seminar, which features a panel of winners discussing topics in journalism.

Winners of 2011 George Polk Awards

Long Island University has announced the winners of the 2011 George Polk Awards in Journalism, including Sara Ganim, a 24-year-old crime reporter with The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., who brought to light allegations of child sex abuse against former Penn State assistant footballcoach Jerry Sandusky and who helped expose the institutional cover up that followed.

Polk Grants for Investigative Reporting

In 2011, the George Polk Award program initiated grants for experienced reporters to undertake specific investigative projects. The aim is to provide relief for reporters in need of work and to promote investigative articles on the Web.

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