Times Reporter Tracy Wilkinson Wins Polk Award

Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson has won the George Polk Award, one of journalism’s highest honors, for her reporting on the armed fight for independence by ethnic Albanians in Serb-controlled Kosovo.

Wilkinson revealed that ethnic Albanian guerrillas were readying for battle weeks before fighting erupted. She also has found signs of hope amid the violence by profiling people willing to defy ethnic prejudices that divided communities.

“Tracy succeeded in reporting one of the most horrific stories in terms of the people suffering through the conflict in the former Yugoslavia,” said Times Editor Michael Parks. “This took tremendous skill, great compassion and a commitment to telling the truth.”

Times Foreign Editor Simon K.C. Li said that “for three years, Tracy Wilkinson bore witness to mostly terrible events in the Balkans, usually in harsh and hostile conditions. This award is particularly gratifying, because in honoring her smart reporting, it implies recognition of her courage, endurance and dedication.”

Wilkinson, 39, joined The Times in 1987 as a reporter in the Westside bureau. She covered the Kosovo conflict as the paper’s Vienna bureau chief, and now heads the Jerusalem bureau.

The Times has won the award 10 times.

Wilkinson is among 13 Polk winners chosen by a committee of faculty and alumni of Long Island University. The annual awards were established in 1949 to honor a CBS reporter killed covering the Greek civil war.

Other awards went to the Kansas City Star, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, Time magazine, the Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Pacifica Radio and the New York Times.

The awards will be presented in New York on April 14.