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2008 Awards Programs The ASA Media Awards recognize journalists whose work has had an exceptional impact on public awareness of issues related to aging at the local or regional levels. 2008 MEDIA AWARDS
NATIONAL MEDIA - ELECTRONIC
Melissa Godoy & Eileen Littig Do Not Go Gently distributed by American Public Television
After retiring as the Director of Northeast Wisconsin Telecommunication Center, Eileen, growing older herself, sought to return to unfinished business that still was troubling her – elder abuse and despair. She was troubled by the negative portrayals of aging in America. Director Melissa Godoy uses filmmaking to investigate the nature of reality, more specifically, the nature of consciousness. Godoy brings endless experimentation toward visual communication and its contrast with aural elements, juxtaposing images and sound to evoke new awareness. Weaving together the arts, sciences, and human story, Godoy works to discover. One personally important pursuit has been an exploration of the human mind and spirit as it applies to creativity and aging. Godoy began Do Not Go Gently with a simple question: If people are living longer and able to express themselves, what are they saying? And, why? Melissa Godoy was most recently Line Producer of the 2007 Primetime Emmy Award-winning documentary A Lion in the House. During the last presidential election, Godoy was a field producer and director of photography for the documentary feature, Election Day, which is currently debuting on the film festival circuit. Godoy has also created award-winning High Definition exhibits for museums, including at the Cincinnati Art Museum and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Among her favorite recent projects has included an interactive virtual community for violinists, violinmasterclass.com, currently used in over 25 countries.
NATIONAL MEDIA - PRINT
Alice Dembner The Boston Glob
During her career, she has reported and edited regional and national news at daily newspapers across the Northeast. She has won numerous awards, including the 1997 American Association of University Professors national award for excellence in higher education reporting, the American Geriatrics Society 2004 Aging Awareness Media Award, and the 2007 National Press Club award for writing on geriatrics.
LOCAL & REGIONAL MEDIA
Warren Wolfe
Star Tribune
Honorable Mention – National Media
Lucette Lagnado
The Wall Street Journal
Prior to joining the Journal, Ms. Lagnado was an investigative reporter for columnist Jack Anderson from 1980 to mid-1987 and a New York based reporter for the New York Post from 1987 to 1990. She was the “urban guerrilla” columnist for the Village Voice from 1990 to 1993. In September 1993, she joined the Forward, an English edition of a Jewish news weekly, and was both a senior and executive editor for the publication.
Honorable Mention – Local & Regional Media
Tracy Breton
The Providence Journal
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In 1992, Godoy and Eileen Littig co-produced I Grow Old, a television documentary about the devastating consequences of elder abuse. They knew there was another side to aging and wanted to reveal the secrets to positive and creative aging. Together, they produced Do Not Go Gently, a documentary on the power of imagination in aging.
Alice Dembner, a medical reporter at the Boston Globe, covers aging, elder health and healthcare policy, including Massachusetts’ landmark health insurance initiative. She brings to the task the drive for social justice that drew her to journalism 30 years ago and the investigative skills she honed during four years with the Globe's Spotlight Team.
Warren Wolfe writes about aging and social issues for the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, MN. Much of his reporting concentrates on issues of long-term care, government health care programs, caregiving and public policy. He is a founding member of the Journalists Exchange on Aging and wrote “Checklist for Aging: A Workbook for Caregiving,” a book based on a 25-part series in the newspaper. He and his wife, Sheryl Fairbanks, are active caregivers for their parents.
Lucette Lagnado is a senior special writer in the New York bureau of The Wall Street Journal. She covers hospital and health systems in the U.S., concentrating on the poor, the elderly and the uninsured. She joined the paper in 1996 as a New York-based reporter covering health care and was named to her current position in May 2000.
Tracy Breton is a member of the investigative team at The Providence Journal, where she has worked for almost 35 years, since graduating from Syracuse University in 1973. She specializes in writing about legal issues and legal affairs. She has won several regional and national awards for her work, including the Investigative Reporters & Editors' Gold Medal and the Sevellon Brown Public Service Award. In 1994, she was part of a team of Journal reporters that won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for a series of stories that exposed corruption in the Rhode Island court system and led to the resignation, indictment and conviction of the state's chief justice and his top administrator. In 1995, the New England Society of Newspaper Editors awarded Breton its Master Reporting Award--given to one reporter a year on a large circulation newspaper for a career's worth of work. In July 2006, Breton was selected as one of 10 journalists from the U.S. and abroad to receive a $10,000 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship to expand her reporting on elder abuse and exploitation. She has taught journalism at Brown University since 1997. She has also been a speaker for several years at the National Writers' Workshop and a guest writing coach at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla.