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 The late Mollie Parnis Livingston with Neal Hochman, her nephew and successor as president of the Mollie Parnis Livingston Foundation, at the 1991 awards luncheon. Photo by Mary Hillard |
The Livingston Awards for excellence by professionals under the age of 35 are the largest all-media, general reporting prizes in American journalism. They are also unusual in judging print, broadcast and on-line entries against one another, a practice of increasing interest as technology blurs traditional distinctions between rival branches of the profession.
The prizes are sponsored by the Mollie Parnis Livingston Foundation, chaired by Neal Hochman, Miss Parnis' nephew and successor. She established the program in 1980 to honor her son, Robert, who published the journalism review More. Ten thousand dollar prizes for local, national, and international reporting are conferred in person by the judging panel at a New York luncheon attended by leading media figures and the winners' families and colleagues.
Mollie Parnis dress designs were wearable success symbols of the 1960's through the early 1980's. She loved and gathered around her top young talent in the fashion business, a practice she then extended to journalism. To her delight, she realized that the awards were creating a journalistic "family" of considerable and growing distinction. In most cases, it was her prizes that had recognized the winners' talent first, when they needed it most.
Group Photo
2nd Row: Susan Goldberg, Fred de Sam Lazaro, Michele Norris, Therese Bottomly, Naedine Hazell, Jill Abramson
3rd Row: Christiane Amanpour, Ellen Goodman, Charles R. Eisendrath, Clarence Page, Ken Auletta, Tom Brokaw, Adam Goodman
Photo by Lisa Berg
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