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Stephen Barr Award Winner
It had been a good National Editorial Conference for Shabnam Mogharabi. Selected as one of
seven Young
Leaders Scholarship winners, she had
gotten an extra boost during the July
20 awards banquet. The feature series
she had written for Aquatics International was honored with a Gold,
bringing congratulations all around But she was not ready for the Stephen Barr Award. That
honor — the third annual individual
feature-writing prize bestowed
by ASBPE and endowed by the parents
of Stephen Barr’s parents, Judith and Charles
Barr, who were both in attendance — came at
the very end of the
banquet, just after Computerworld and
CSO claimed their Magazine of the Year
trophies. The honor comes with a check
When her name was called, Mogharabi put her hand to her face in shock. It stayed there all the way up to the microphone. By coincidence, also in attendance
was one of her magazine professors at
Northwestern University’s Medill
School of Journalism, where she had received ‘Minority Report’Mogharabi, business editor of Hanley Wood’s Pool & Spa News, won the Barr Award for her two part series,“Minority Report,” written for sister magazine Aquatics International’s October and November/December issues in 2005. “Minority Report” dug deep for explanations about why American minority youths account for a disproportionately high percentage of drowning deaths, and suggested ways to improve efforts to save lives. The series made a significant contribution to the professionals who are the magazine’s readers, and also pointed up an under-reported malady in need of correction. Said Mogharabi’s editor at Los Angeles-based Pool & Spa News, Erika Taylor, “As is typical for her, she became deeply involved in the topic, interviewing more than 50 sources, and combing through myriad government documents. The result was a piece of journalism that stands among the best I’ve read during my tenure with this magazine.” Comments by othersJudges noted Ms.Mogharabi’s sensitive yet dispassionate handling of a complex, emotional issue. “The series was written with authority, compassion and intelligence,” said one. “Compelling from start to finish.” A sidebar on limited career opportunities among young Hispanic and black nonswimmers was especially enlightening. Others were moved as well after reading copies of the articles made available at the Conference. In his July 31 Computerworld column, editor-in-chief Don Tennant wrote that besides winning Magazine-of-the-Year honors, “there was something else I enjoyed just as much: the opportunity to meet a certain journalist who also received a prestigious ASBPE award. That journalist is Shabnam Mogharabi. … “I was impressed enough with Mogharabi to be compelled to read her story, and I was appalled by the stereotyping she uncovered. The story referenced a 1969 study called ‘The Negro and Learning to Swim,’ which contended that blacks are biologically less buoyant than whites because of higher bone density and body mass. Despite dozens of subsequent studies that have proved this outlandish notion to be false, it seems many black parents continue to buy into the belief. …” Discerning judgmentHer application for ASBPE’s Young Leaders Scholarship displayed sharp insights about challenges facing the business- to-business press. Noting that her coworkers are “bright, talented, creative people who would thrive in any segment of the publishing world, regardless of the audience,” she observed that such excellence exists despite business-to-business being “stigmatized” as inferior to the mainstream media. “And more journalism schools need to talk about the business press as a viable, fulfilling career path,” she said. Her embarrassment didn’t stop at the banquet. The last jolt was left to Don Tennant, who wondered aloud several times during his Magazine of the Year case study session the next morning whether Mogharabi would be working for his magazine some day. “Are you listening, Shabnam?” he asked. About the Stephen Barr AwardThe Stephen Barr Award is named for one of the ASBPE’s most-honored journalists, who died of cancer in 2002 at the age of 43. Unlike other ASBPE awards, it honors individual writing from among the best entries in all editorial feature categories, especially work that reflects the qualities of inventiveness, insight, balance, depth of investigation, and impact on readers. A check for $500 accompanies the award. See the winners in these categories: The Stephen Barr Award
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