UA Cason Award to Honor Cynthia Tucker

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor for “The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,” will receive the 2007 Clarence Cason Writing Award from the journalism department at The University of Alabama Thursday, March 8 at a banquet in her honor at the Sheraton Four Points Hotel.

As editorial page editor, Tucker is responsible for guiding the development of the Journal-Constitution’s opinion policies on everything from foreign policy issues to local school board races. She also is a syndicated columnist whose commentary appears in more than 70 newspapers around the country.

Having considerable reporting experience, she has covered local governments, national politics, crime and education. She has also filed dispatches from Africa, Central America and Cuba.

Tucker has won numerous honors and awards, including the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Distinguished Writing Award in 2000 and Colby College’s Elijah Lovejoy Award in 2005. In 2006, the National Association of Black Journalists named her Journalist of the Year. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2004 and again in 2006.

Tucker is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, American Society of Newspaper Editors, the National Association of Minority Media Executives and the Council on Foreign Relations. She graduated from Auburn University in 1976 and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in the 1988-89 academic year.

The journalism department in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at UA established the Cason Award in 1997 to honor exemplary non-fiction over a long career. All of the recipients have had strong connections to the state of Alabama.

Tickets for the banquet honoring Tucker are $50 and include dinner. The event will begin with a 6 p.m. reception. Tucker will accept the award and speak at the banquet.

To order tickets, call Sheila Davis at 205/348-4787. UA faculty and staff can purchase tickets to the Cason Banquet for $30.