Deseret News
Sunday, June 30, 1996

3 DESERET NEWS REPORTERS WIN AWARDS

National Press Club honors Lee Davidson, Bob Bernick, Chip Parkinson. ______________________________________________________________________

Three Deseret News reporters have received national honors in contests sponsored by the National Press Club.

Political Editor Bob Bernick Jr., Washington correspondent Lee Davidson and reporter Chip Parkinson shared an honorable mention in the club's Washington Correspondence Award competition for helping expose the financial morass of Joe Waldholtz and Rep. Enid Greene, R-Utah.

Davidson also won a separate honorable mention in the Club's Robin Goldstein Award for Regional Reporters in Washington competition for a portfolio showing his range of work during the year.

The awards will be formally presented July 17 at a club luncheon by ABC News correspondent Cokie Roberts and National Press Club President Sonja Hillgren.

The honorable mention - essentially a second-place - for Washington Correspondence was given for stories questioning Waldholtz's wealth that built pressure on him until he disappeared for six days, and for continuing stories that helped reveal he was not a millionaire and had committed fraud.

Waldholtz pleaded guilty earlier this month to campaign, tax and bank fraud charges. Greene, his ex-wife, chose not to seek re-election amid questions about how much she knew of Waldholtz's actions - and a grand jury continues to look at that.

Davidson won a separate honorable mention in the Goldstein contest for Washington cor-re-spon-dents of regional newspapers for a portfolio of eight examples of his work.

That included stories on Waldholtz; a probe that revealed secret testing at sea by Dugway Proving Ground, which may have caused widespread cancer among participating sailors; a computer-assisted study on whom Utah's largest political donors are; coverage of base closure controversy; and a feature that revealed old, little-known battles about how Utah was named and created.

Davidson has twice won first place in the Goldstein contest for regional reporters - in 1990 and 1991 - and also won an honorable mention in 1993. He also won first place in the Washington Correspondence Award in 1992.

The Deseret News also won both awards the first time each was offered. Former correspondent Gordon Eliot White won the first Washington Correspondence Award in 1979 for revealing high cancer rates downwind in Utah from nuclear tests, and Davidson won the first two Goldstein awards in 1990 and 1991.