Stanley Karnow named first recipient of Shorenstein Award

BY LISA TREI

Journalist Stanley Karnow has been named the winner of the first Shorenstein Award, which will be presented jointly by Stanford and Harvard universities in a public program Jan. 17 at the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center.

The award, which carries a $10,000 prize, honors a journalist for a distinguished body of work and for the particular way it has helped American readers understand the complexities of Asia, said Russell Hancock, director of the Shorenstein Forum for Asia-Pacific Studies at Stanford. The annual award is presented by the Shorenstein Forum and the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, part of the Kennedy School of Government.

The award program, which is free and open to the public, starts at 7:30 p.m. Karnow will deliver an address reflecting on the problems and prospects for American journalists in Asia. A seminar discussion of Karnow's remarks is scheduled for Jan. 18 at 10 a.m. in the Asia/Pacific Scholars room at Encina Hall.

"An honor of this magnitude could only fall to somebody of extraordinary stature, and that person is Stanley Karnow," said Hancock.

Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley and a member of the award selection jury, said, "Long before we knew what 'multimedia' was, Stanley Karnow was already an incarnation of such versatility. From newspapers and magazines to books and films, from Paris and Vietnam to Hong Kong, China and the Philippines, Karnow has ranged widely, merging the best of journalistic reportage with more academic research."

Other jury members included Boston Globe editorial page editor David Greenway; Jim Thompson, Harvard professor emeritus and former curator of the Niemann Foundation; and Donald Emmerson, senior fellow at Stanford's Institute for International Studies.

Karnow has been helping U.S. readers understand Asia since the 1950s, when he was assigned to Vietnam by Time magazine. In 1991, Karnow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines. His book Vietnam: A History has sold 1.5 million copies. During his career, Karnow also has written for Life, The Saturday Evening Post, London Observer and Washington Post, and reported for NBC News. Among his assignments, he accompanied President Richard M. Nixon to China in 1972. He was in Vietnam when the first Americans were killed in 1959 and covered the war until its conclusion.

"Among the thousands of books on America's experience in Indochina, Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History stands out," said Emmerson. "Amply displayed on its pages are its author's respect for complexity, aversion to cant and enthusiasm for context, all without loss of chronological narrative drive. When this achievement is added to the comparable ambition and quality of Karnow's books on other parts of Asia, notably the Philippines and China, not to mention his dispatches and articles for dozens of serial publications, it is hard to think of anyone in journalism who has done more, over a longer period, to help Americans understand East Asia."

The Shorenstein Award memorializes the longstanding efforts of the Walter Shorenstein Family to promote responsible journalism and to advance greater understanding between the United States and Asia. Joan Shorenstein Barone is remembered for the high professional standards she set as a reporter, and the Joan Shorenstein Center at Harvard was established in her memory in 1986. The Shorenstein Forum was established in 1998 at Stanford to acknowledge the contributions of Walter Shorenstein, a longtime supporter of America's relations with Asia.