Kristof Garners Atlantic’s Kelly Award

Atlantic Media today announced the NYT’s Nicholas Kristof as the 2005 winner of its Mike Kelly Award. The award is given in honor of the late Atlantic editor who died covering the Iraq War in 2003.

The $25,000 award, given for the second time this year, is given annually to a journalist whose “work exemplifies a quality that animated Michael Kelly’s own career: the fearless pursuit and expression of truth.”

“Kristof linked the word ‘genocide’ to the ongoing persecution of black Africans in the Sudanese region of Darfur, and focused attention on the continued sexual exploitation of young women in the brothels of Cambodia. With conviction, passion, and audacity, Kristof tugged at the world’s conscience, in the best tradition of Michael Kelly,” the judges wrote.

Kristof and the other finalists–David Grann, a staff writer with The New Yorker; Kim Murphy, Moscow bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times; Maximillian Potter, executive editor of 5280, the Denver city magazine; and Elizabeth Rubin, contributing writer, New York Times Magazine–will be honored with a dinner here Thursday.

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