Leonard Karlin, 81; Helped Establish Polk Awards for Journalism
Leonard Karlin, 81, a longtime director of public relations for Long Island University who helped establish the George Polk Awards for journalism, died Nov. 14 at a hospice in the Bronx, N.Y. He had a brain tumor.
When the school established the awards in 1949, Karlin was an assistant to the university’s president.
Karlin later became director of communications, a position he held for 17 years until he left to work in publishing in 1967.
He wrote many of the citations for the awards, which were named for a CBS News correspondent who died while reporting on a civil war in Greece. Karlin also served on the committee that selected the winners.
He was editor of the magazine Sports Inc. in the late 1980s, and publisher of Careers magazine in the 1970s and ‘80s.
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