Italian Ambassador Giulio Terzi announced Wednesday night that the recipient of the 2011 Urbino Press Award is Helene Cooper, White House Correspondent for NYT. The award is given each year to an American journalist “for distinguished reporting on the ever-changing world.”  Cooper, born in Monrovia, Liberia, had to flee the country after the 1980 coup. She wrote about her experiences in the war-torn African country in her memoir, The House at Sugar Beach.

Previous winners include: ABC’s Martha Raddatz, NYT Columnist Thomas Friedman, WaPo’s David Ignatius and NPR’s Diane Rehm.

Cooper’s remarks: “I’m incredibly honored to receive this year’s Urbino Press Award, for both professional and personal reasons. Professionally, I’m thrilled and humbled to share a stage with David Ignatius, Tom Friedman and Martha Raddatz—they are all first-rate chroniclers of the world around us. And personally for me,  there is no higher honor than being recognized by the cultural heirs of Baldassare Castiglione, Elisabetta Gonzaga and Federico da Montefeltro—a trio who epitomized Renaissance cool as far as I’m concerned. Grazie mille, Urbino.”

Cooper is scheduled to receive her prize in a ceremony in Urbino on June 3.