EL ANDAR SWEEPS TOP AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE IN JOURNALISM AND PHOTOJOURNALISM

Takes top photography prize four years running

CONTACT:
Julie Reynolds;
El Andar Media Corp.,
831 457-8353
editor@elandar.com
Queta Bauer;
Cultural Communications, LLC
Office: 773 285-1055
Cell: 773 301-7099
qbauer@culturalcommunications.com Sandip Roy,
New California Media,
415 503-4170

SANTA CRUZ, CA, September 25, 2002. El Andar —the national magazine that covers political and cultural trends in the US Latino community— has won two top awards and three runners-up from the New California Media (NCM) Awards.

NCM – America's most diverse media network – honored the winners at the NCM Awards Banquet at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills on September 17.

El Andar’s winners include Paul Myers for “Guatemala: Exhuming the Past,” Best Photo Essay Award, and Catherine Worth and Tatiana de la Tierra for “Refugees of an Endless War” and “A Prisoner of Hope,” International Affairs Award.

El Andar has won the NCM Photography Prize every year since the Award’s inception in 1997.

Dubbed by mainstream media as "the Pulitzers of the ethnic media," the NCM Awards are the only multi-lingual awards for ethnic media journalists in the country. This year NCM received almost 300 entries – “a record-breaking number, which is a testament to the vibrancy of this fast-growing segment of American journalism,” said Eva Martinez, former Director of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University and currently Executive Director of Accion Latina.

NCM has a membership of over 400 print, broadcast and online ethnic media organizations in the state of California. NCM is the most comprehensive multi-cultural, multi-ethnic media coalition in the state of California and the country.
El Andar also placed three runners-up that include Camille Mojica Rey for Healthcare, Joseph Rodríguez for Spot Photography, and Karina Ioffee, Hillary Cargo and Catherine Worth for the Best in-Depth/Investigative award. El Andar has previously won seven NCM awards and runners-up in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000 for excellence in journalism and photojournalism.

According to NCM judges, “Paul Myers puts a human face on Guatemala’s 36-year civil war which killed thousands of Mayan Indians while driving them from their land.” This is the second time NCM awards a prize to Paul Myers for his continuing excellence and commitment to social photojournalism. The judges also commended Myers’ photo essay on Brazil published in El Andar in the Spring of 2001.

Catherine Worth won the first prize for her work in reporting the life of Colombian farmers in refugee camps in a Colombian border town with Ecuador. Ms. Worth was an intern at El Andar while attending the University of California, Santa Cruz and before going to work for The Village Voice in New York. Tatiana de la Tierra is a Colombian writer who won this award for her story on intellectual Gustavo Gardeazábal who was at the time in prison in Colombia but was freed five months after the story was published.
According to Julie Reynolds, the magazine’s editor, “el Andar’s writers and photographers are committed and passionate about their work.”

The magazine and the winning entries may be accessed at www.elandar.com.

About el Andar Magazine
el Andar has investigative reporting, insightful commentary, short fiction, and poetry, written by iconoclastic thinkers and famous Latin Americans, such as Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Ana Castillo, and Sandra Cisneros. In addition, el Andar is the winner of 15 awards for journalistic and photographic excellence.

El Andar was founded by its publisher, Jorge Chino, in 1989. Its beautifully printed pages offer interviews with luminaries such as Edward James Olmos and Pedro Almodovar.

THE EL ANDAR BOARD OF ADVISORS
Francisco X. Alarcón, Author, UC Davis
Vernon Avila, San Diego State University
René Alegría, Editor, HarperCollins/Rayo
Rudolfo Anaya, Author
Homero Aridjis, Pen International
Norma E. Cantú, University of Texas, San Antonio
Aldo Castillo, Curator, Chicago
Lidia Chávez, UCB, Graduate School of Journalism
Sandy Close, Pacific News Service
Dr. Carlos Cortes, Professor, UC Riverside
Ariel Dorfman, Author, Duke University
María Amparo Escandón, writer
Martín Espada, Author, U-Mass Amherst
Moctesuma Esparza, Film Producer
Carlos Fuentes, Author, Former Diplomat
Nely Galán, Producer
Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Performer
Robert Graham, Sculptor
Ester Hernández, Artist
María Hinojosa, Journalist, CNN
Graciela Iturbide, Photographer
Rolando Loera, Business Consultant
William Martínez, Lawyer
Dr. Bernardita Méndez, Fundación Ciencia para la Vida
Dr. Amalia Mesa-Bains, CSUMB
Hugo Morales, Radio Bilingüe
Elena Poniatowska, Author
Eduardo Porter, The Wall Street Journal
Jorge Reina Schement, Penn State University
Ilan Stavans, writer, UMass, Amherst
Adrienne Rich, Author
Richard Rodríguez, Author
Samuel Ruiz, Bishop Chiapas, México
John Phillip Santos, Ford Foundation
Gary Soto, Author
Ray Suárez, NPB
Luis Alberto Urrea, Author, University of Illinois
Luis Valdez, Film Director, Teatro Campesino
Pepe Vargas, Int. Latino Cultural Center of Chicago
Dr. Pablo Valenzuela, Fundación Ciencia para la Vida
Dr. Celia Zapata, SJSU
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Isabel Allende, “The Paula Award” el Andar Prize for Literary Excellence

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