David CookTimes Free Press columnist David Cook has won a national writing award for his work in 2015.
Cook on Tuesday received the American Society of News Editors’ 2016 Mike Royko Award for Commentary/Column Writing for what judges called his “deeply reported and gracefully written” columns.
Cook’s winning columns included coverage of the July 16 Chattanooga shooting, a column about a Lookout Mountain man whose planes brought Ebola victims to Atlanta and the execution of Kelly Gissendaner, the first woman in Georgia to be put to death in 70 years.
The judges said this of Cook’s work:
“David Cook tackles complex subject matters in his deeply reported and gracefully written columns for the Times Free Press. He captures the grief and outrage of a daughter who missed her mother’s execution for killing her father because she had tried in vain to address the Board of Pardons. He captures the bravery of a man who stalwartly suits up to take on a job nobody wants, cleaning out planes that had transported Ebola victims. And he uses all the power of his columnist voice to speak for and to the community with great eloquence, as he asks Chattanooga to stand up to its fear in the wake of a domestic terrorist attack.”
Last year, Cook was honored with the Education Writers Association award for opinion writing for his columns on standardized testing and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Green Eyeshade award for serious commentary.
Read his columns that received the ASNE award here:
— The Amazing Grace of Kelly Gissendaner
— When this plane lands, it’s carrying death
— Meet the local gravedigger who saves lives