Ellsworth American series on The Jackson Laboratory wins national journalism award

Date: June 11, 2008

Bar Harbor, Maine -- A four-week, 20-part series on The Jackson Laboratory published in the weekly Ellsworth American and Mount Desert Islander newspapers in February and March has won a national journalism award.

Presented by the Foundation for Biomedical Research in Washington, D.C., the Michael E. DeBakey Journalism Awards program recognizes outstanding investigative or interpretive reporting about scientific discoveries involving animal models.

The newspaper series, written by Ellsworth American News Reporter Tom Walsh and designed by Catherine McKinney, covered a wide range of aspects of the nonprofit Jackson Laboratory: an internationally renowned genetics research institution that is also one of Maine's largest employers and an economic engine for the state and local economy.

Walsh, a journalist with years of experience in medical and science writing and a master's degree in science communications, said he proposed the series to his editors because, "like many residents of eastern Maine, I was aware of The Jackson Laboratory, but knew little about the scope and depth of its mission as a biomedical research resource."

Despite the many column-inches devoted to the series, Walsh added, "I felt like I had only scratched the surface in terms of educating our readers -- in language they could grasp -- about the ongoing work of 38 research teams, a small army of research scientists that continues to grow as more teams come on staff. The Jackson Laboratory is a unique asset not only to this region, but to the scientific community worldwide. And it was my hope, through these stories, to make that clear."

Jackson Laboratory President and CEO Rick Woychik, Ph.D., congratulated Walsh and McKinney, and the editors and publishers of the newspapers that published the series."People from all around the community have come up to me to comment how much they learned about the Laboratory through this series, and how much better they now understand the work we are doing to improve human health," he said.

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Contact(s): Joyce Peterson, 207-288-6058

For information on automatic email delivery of news releases (journalists only), please send an email request for details to news@jax.org.

Office of Public Information
The Jackson Laboratory
600 Main Street
Bar Harbor, Maine 04609-1500
Phone: 207-288-6051
Fax: 207-288-6076
Email: news@jax.org