O.C. Times Photojournalist Wins Robert Kennedy Award

Times Orange County Edition photojournalist Gail Fisher’s photo essay of inner-city teens enrolled in a Santa Ana ballet school was honored Thursday with a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, a prestigious prize recognizing outstanding coverage of issues facing society’s disadvantaged.

The prize was for 35 pictures that appeared in a special section titled “Shelter on Stage,” which chronicled the troubled lives of five youngsters who turned to the Saint Joseph Ballet for refuge, growth and a new hope.

The photos and accompanying stories by Times staff writer Rebecca Trounson were published in the May 26, 1996, edition of the Times Orange County Edition.

Fisher, photo editor for special projects, has also received national awards for “Shelter on Stage” from the National Press Photographers Assn. and the Society of Newspaper Design. Also, the writing and photography recently won first place for General Excellence from the Orange County Press Club.

In other honors, Los Angeles Times travel writer Christopher Reynolds was named Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of 1997, the top travel writing award given annually by the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition.

The competition is sponsored by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation and judged by faculty members of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

The judges noted the “depth and breadth . . . and flair” of Reynolds’ work. Reynolds also won the award in 1995.

Other 1997 Kennedy award winners for print journalism were Melvin Claxton of the Virgin Islands Daily News, for his investigative report documenting problems of the educational system in the Virgin Islands; Gilbert Lewthwaite and Gregory Kane of the Baltimore Sun, for stories that confirmed claims that slavery still exists in Sudan; Carol Guzy of the Washington Post, for her photographs of the exodus of Rwandan refugees returning home from Zaire; and Doug Marlette of Newsday, for editorial cartoons covering topics such as the burning of African American churches and campaign issues of 1996.

Winners receive $1,000 and a bust of Robert F. Kennedy.

The awards were created by the journalists who covered Kennedy’s truncated presidential bid that ended with his 1968 assassination in Los Angeles. The rallying cry for Kennedy’s campaign, “We can do better,” and the accompanying agenda of racial and economic justice inspired the prize criteria.

Fisher and Trounson spent hundreds of hours over nine months with teacher Beth Burns and her pupils in the Saint Joseph Ballet, joining them at family gatherings, athletic events and endless dance practices.

The teenage dancers shared secrets and the tales of their lives, rife with seemingly intractable inner-city woes: Violence, gangs, drugs, broken families and lack of opportunity. While the ballet offered no panacea, it had become a haven for the youngsters.

Fisher, 43, is married and has two young children. The Ohio native joined The Times in 1983 after three years at the San Bernardino Sun.