WASHINGTON (June 8, 2009) - The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is pleased to announce Washington Post reporter Tara Bahrampour and Nicholas Kulish of The New York Times as the 2009 recipients of the Peter R. Weitz Prize for excellence and originality in U.S. reporting on Europe and the transatlantic relationship.

"GMF is committed to fostering understanding on transatlantic issues, and a vibrant American press covering Europe is critical to that understanding," said GMF President Craig Kennedy. "We hope that news organizations will continue to invest in foreign reporting so that policymakers, businesses, and publics can make informed decisions on a host of foreign and domestic issues."

Bahrampour, a staff writer with The Washington Post, has been awarded the $10,000 senior prize for her reporting on the war in Georgia and its aftermath in 2008.  According to the judges, her coverage exposed the human side of the war, including an "outstanding" account of the search for a man in Abkhazia, still missing from an earlier conflict in the region.  One judge praised her "textured, detailed, original on-the-ground reporting," saying that, "Her personalized narratives were poignant without being emotionalized, capturing the feel of a story without missing the news."  During the time she spent reporting in Georgia, her accounts "revealed the subtleties and contradictions behind one of Europe's biggest stories of the year."

For his reporting on Germany, Kulish, the Berlin bureau chief of The New York Times, has been awarded the $5,000 junior prize for outstanding coverage of Europe by a journalist under 35.  In revisiting the somewhat forgotten tragedies of the Cold War, Kulish was commended by the judges for his "great attention to detail and history and human narratives inside a big news story."  His reporting on the communist-era past was said to "combine versatility with virtuosity," as Kulish sharply dissected the cultural mores of contemporary Germany as well as the German-Russian relationship.

The recipients of the 2009 awards will be honored this summer at an awards ceremony at GMF's Washington, DC, headquarters.  The Weitz Prize was established in 1999 in memory of Peter R. Weitz, former director of programs at GMF, for his interest in promoting coverage of European affairs by American journalists.  Past winners of the senior prize include Andrew Higgins and Marcus Walker of the Wall Street Journal, Colin Nickerson of the Boston Globe, Sebastian Rotella of the Los Angeles Times, Craig Whitlock and Peter Finn of the The Washington Post, Roger Cohen of The New York Times, and James Kitfield of National Journal. The senior prize is open to all journalists working for American publications; the junior prize is for journalists 35 and under.  Winners were selected by a jury of distinguished American and European journalists - Julian Borger of The Guardian, Francine Kiefer of the Christian Science Monitor, C.M. Sennott of Globalpost.com, Barbara Slavin of The Washington Times, and Stefan Theil of Newsweek.

For more information on the Peter R. Weitz Prize and other opportunities for journalists, please contact Kristina Field at kfield@gmfus.org.

To read the winning entries, please click here.

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The German Marshall Fund of the United States (www.gmfus.org) is a nonpartisan American public policy and grantmaking institution dedicated to promoting greater cooperation and understanding between North America and Europe. Founded in 1972 through a gift from Germany on the 25th anniversary of the Marshall Plan as a permanent memorial to the Marshall Plan assistance, GMF maintains a strong presence on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to its headquarters in Washington, DC, GMF has seven offices in Europe: Berlin, Bratislava, Paris, Brussels, Belgrade, Ankara, and Bucharest.

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