The Press: Awards

¶To Jack Steele, 35, of the New York Herald Tribune, the Raymond Clapper memorial award, for contributing to “public enlightenment and a sound democracy.” Stories by Steele started the congressional investigation of the “five-percenters” (TIME, July 4 et seq.). Said President Truman, whose aide, Major General Harry Vaughan, was one of those investigated: “Congratulations, Jack. I like good reporting, no matter what it says.”

¶To Wayne Richardson, 51, veteran Associated Press correspondent in China, the Overseas Press Club’s George Polk memorial award, for “courage, integrity and enterprise.” Bound home from Hong Kong, balding, bespectacled “Pop” Richardson cancelled his plane reservation, signed up as radio operator on the U.S. freighter Flying Arrow. When Chinese Nationalists shelled the blockade runner off Shanghai (TIME, Jan. 16), Richardson got an exclusive story.

¶To Ted Poston, 43, Negro reporter for the New York Post, the American Newspaper Guild’s Heywood Broun memorial award, for journalism “in the spirit” of Crusader Broun. Despite threats from anti-Negro hoodlums, Poston covered the Florida trial of three Negroes charged with rape. The Broun jury gave another “first prize” to the Washington Post’s Herbert L. Block (“Herblock”), 40, for his pointed, powerful cartoons (TIME, Jan. 23).