People Column

OPC Board member Rukmini Callimachi was a winner of the George Polk Awards in Journalism for 2014. Callimachi, who writes for The New York Times, won the award for international reporting for exposing how European nations funded the Islamic State by secretly paying millions of dollars in ransom for
kidnapped citizens. Other awards announced Feb. 16 also had an international focus. Six reporters for The Times won the health reporting award for risking their health and safety while providing the earliest and most reliable coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West
Africa: Helene Cooper,
Daniel Berehulak, Sheri Fink, Adam Nossiter, Norimitsu Onishi and Ben Solomon.

A three-year investigation into international tax dodges won business reporting honors for The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a
group of 120 journalists from 58 countries and 42 news organizations, working as part of The Center for Public Integrity.

Rania Abouzeid, an Australian-Lebanese, won the foreign reporting award for “The Jihad Next Door,” an authoritative account of the rise of the Islamic State, published online by Politico Magazine.

James Verini won the award for magazine reporting for a piece published online by National Geographic on the seeming futility of U.N. intervention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Garry Trudeau, the creator of the “Doonesbury” comic strip, won the
Polk career award.