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Deseret News Washington correspondent Lee Davidson
was honored last week with two national awards for his investigative
series on Cold War testing.
Davidson, a 13-year Deseret News veteran, received honorable mention
during the Raymond Clapper White House Correspondents award ceremonies
at the White House on Saturday. Tuesday, he garnered honorable mention
- or second place - in the 1994 Heywood Broun Award competition. The
Newspaper Guild presents the annual Broun Award. Three winners were
cited, but more than 125 entries were received.
Davidson, a Kearns native, said the 1994 series came out of an earlier
series of informal news reports he'd done on Utah being a government
target for chemical, biological, radiological and atomic arms testing.
The final piece, which ran in December, was a comprehensive list of
the secret tests.
Davidson, who has spent the past six years corresponding in
Washington, D.C., said he spent "the better part of last year" working
on the series. Public debate on rumors of Utah's contaminated public
lands and residents' predisposition to "exotic diseases" fueled the
reports, Davidson added.
Kudos for his work are "nice," he said, but Davidson pointed out that
the awards are good recognition for the Deseret News.
"We're a very small paper. The award winners are all from the big
papers," Davidson said, noting first place winners The Boston Glob and
the Dallas Morning News.
With a Utah media contingent consisting of the Deseret News and KSL-TV
in Washington, Davidson said there's not a lot of competition for spot
news stories. Because of this, he says, he "gets to play" with long
investigative pieces.
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