Glen Mabie, the former news director at WEAU-Eau Claire, Wis., has won a 2009 Payne Award for Excellence in Journalism. Mabie resigned from his job when his station’s management negotiated a deal with Sacred Heart Hospital in which the station would run stories featuring personnel from that hospital but not employees of other area hospitals or clinics.
“Glen Mabie took a stand for a basic principle of journalism,” the judges’ statement reads. “In an environment where the definition of ‘what is journalism’ is exploding, he was willing to risk his own economic security to uphold that basic principle.”
The Payne Awards recognize journalists who practice “the highest standards of the profession in the face of political or economic pressures.”
