For Immediate Release May 18, 2005

For More Information Contact: Robert Dittmer, 317-278-5327 rdittmer@iupui.edu

Journalism Alumnus Wins National Award for Online Reporting

IUPUI School of Journalism alumnus Brian Mohr.

INDIANAPOLIS - IUPUI School of Journalism alumnus Brian Mohr, former editor of The Sagamore, will be awarded a Sigma Delta Chi Award for excellence in journalism at the National Press Club in Washington in July.

Mohr's award winning work in the Deadline Reporting category, was entitled "Hurricane Charley" and was published by the Herald Tribune online newspaper in Sarasota , Fla.

The award to Mohr, a 1996 IUPUI graduate, was presented for work reporting Hurricane Charley in Florida in August 2004.

"Working with dozens of Herald-Tribune and SNN reporters and editors, we established a Hurricane desk where information was delivered from the reporters, edited and published to the web in a blog format in nearly real time. It was one of, if not the, first time a blog (had) appeared on the front page of a web site and (was) used as a tool to cover a major catastrophe.

We had reporters in the field who e-mailed one or two paragraphs of any new information they could come up with and I would then post it to a blog on the front of our site. This kind of process will be the future of how newspapers will relay information to the public on deadline during a disaster," Mohr said.

Of his current position in journalism, Mohr commented, "The newspaper is on the forefront of convergence. We are one of the only newspapers in the country that that has a news station, newspaper and web site. I work in a newsroom where the Web dept., the TV station and the newspaper all have desks side by side. It's really the future of journalism." ###