ENR Honored With Media Awards

Russell, left, and Blair accepted Azbee accolades for ENR at Washington, D.C., event.

Along with rainstorms and cherry blossoms, spring at Engineering News-Record means some finger crossing and nail biting as we wait to find out the results of the journalism competitions we have entered for our work in the past year. I am delighted to say that we won four Jesse H. Neal Awards from Connectiv, a business information association, and 13 national Azbees from the American Society of Business Publication Editors.

Azbees are one of the most competitive award programs for business media—this year more than 1,000 entries were received in 78 categories. “It was really gratifying to see our team selected for excellence in diverse content areas,” says Managing Editor Scott Blair.

One of the judges told Energy & Environment Editor Pam Radtke Russell he was so impressed with our sea-level rise special report that he “read it several times.” Russell led a team (Justin Rice, Alisa Zevin, Scott Judy, Louise Poirier, Aileen Cho, Christine Kilpatrick, Pam Hunter McFarland, Bruce Buckley and Jim Parsons) that produced the national gold Azbee winner.

ENR’s team reporting on “Drowntown,” about catastrophic flooding in Houston, won a Neal Award award for best news coverage and a national bronze Azbee for single-topic coverage in print. That team, also led by Russell, included Blair, Judy, Debra Rubin, Poirier, Luke Abaffy, Tom Armistead and Mary Powers.

ENR won a Neal award for Best Technical Content, too. It recognized three cover stories by Nadine M. Post, Blair and Tom Sawyer about unusually complex projects, with art direction by Scott Hilling providing eye-popping print layouts and photographs.

Blair and Sawyer, along with Abaffy and Rehema Trimiew, also brought home a Neal Award for Best Use of Video. A Neal Award for Best Art Direction for a cover went to Hilling for his pointillistic depiction of the first 100 days of the Trump administration, “Still Coming Into Focus.” Blair also won a gold national Azbee for case history and a silver for online technical content. Russell won a silver national Azbee for her individual profile of Virginia Tech civil engineering professor Marc Edwards, whose work unmasked the lead contamination of the drinking water of Flint, Mich., as did Richard Korman and Scott Judy in the impact/investigative category for an eye-opening look into quality-control issues at two troubled nuclear power plant projects in Georgia and South Carolina.

Finally, at the Neal Awards ceremonies, I was particularly honored to be presented with one of Connectiv’s leadership awards—the G.D. Crain Award for a distinguished editorial career.

After serving as editor-in-chief for 20 years, Jan Tuchman was former executive editor, leading content development for Engineering News-Record's wide-ranging series of live and virtual events. These include the Groundbreaking Women in Construction, the Emerging Leaders Forum, FutureTech and infrastructure forums in the New York/New Jersey region and Los Angeles. Tuchman is the 2023-24 chair of the American Society of Civil Engineers Industry Leaders Council, she is a member of the Columbia University Center for Infrastructure, Facilities and Public Spaces, and she is active in The Moles, a heavy construction leadership organization. Her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism are from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Industry honors include the Ted C. Kennedy Award from the National Academy of Construction and the service and supply award from the Beavers. She lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and enjoys singing in the Brooklyn Community Chorus.

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