Melinda Liu receives Shorenstein Journalism Award

Melinda Liu, Beijing bureau chief for Newsweek, has been named recipient of the 2006 Shorenstein Journalism Award. The annual award, which includes a $10,000 prize, is awarded jointly by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

At 5:15 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, Liu will deliver a lecture titled "China in the World: A View from Beijing" at the Bechtel Conference Center in Encina Hall. The event, followed by a reception, is free and open to the public.

At noon Friday, Feb. 17, Liu will join a panel to discuss "The World in China: Rights, Wrongs and Reporters" in the Philippines Conference Room on the third floor of Encina Hall. Alex Jones, director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center; Xiao Qiang of the China Internet Project at the University of California-Berkeley; and Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC-Berkeley, also will participate. Donald Emmerson, director of the Southeast Asia Forum at the Freeman Spogli Institute, will moderate the event.

The Shorenstein Award honors a journalist for a distinguished body of work and for the particular way the work has helped American readers to understand the complexities of Asia. Liu was named Newsweek's Beijing bureau chief in September 1998, returning to the bureau that she had opened in 1980, the same year she joined the magazine. Liu has reported extensively on international policy, both in the United States and abroad. In 1986 and 1987, she covered the fall of Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos and unsuccessful coup attempts against President Corazon Aquino. In September 1988, Liu was the only Western staff correspondent in Rangoon when the Burmese military launched a violent takeover. In spring 1989, she supervised Newsweek's coverage of the Tiananmen Square student protests.

-30-