WASHINGTON -- Gregory Gordon of United Press International and Dennis Camire and Mark Rohner of Gannett News Service shared first place in the 1983 Raymond Clapper Memorial award for excellence in reporting.
Gordon won for continuing coverage of the upheavals in the Environmental Protection Agency titled, 'EPA: Anatomy of a Scandal.'
Rohner and Camire's series uncovered mismanagement in the Farmers Home Administration. Rohner, Camire and editor Sharen Johnson also won the Worth Bingham Award for the same series, 'The Golden Yoke.'
The awards were presented Friday at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner at the Washington Hilton.
It was the first tie in the 40-year history of the prestigious Clapper award.
In another departure from precedent, Newsweek magazine won the 1984 Merriman Smith award given by the White House Correspondents Association for coverage of the bombing of Marine headquarters in Lebanon.
In giving the award to the magazine, the judges said, 'This comprehensive, vivid report on one of the year's most spectacular spot news stories was produced by correspondents in the Middle East and Washington and editors in New York under deadline pressure in the true tradition of Merriman Smith.'
Newsweek reworked the Oct. 31 issue of its magazine after 31 percent of the normal press run had been printed.
The award is in memory of Merriman Smith, chief White House correspondent for UPI until his death in 1970. Newsweek gave the $500 prize to a college fund established for Smith's 16-year-old daughter.
The association also gave the Aldo Beckman award to Lou Cannon of The Washington Post. The award, named after the late White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune, honors White House correspondents for the overall quality of their work covering the president.
The winners of the Clapper award divided a first prize of $2,000.
Second prize of $500 went to Lawrence O'Rourke of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for a series on infectious diseases in underdeveloped countries.
Michael Getler of The Washington Post received honorable mention for a series on the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007.
Raymond Clapper, a Washington correspondent and columnist for Scripps-Howard newspapers, was killed in a plane crash covering the invasion of the Marshall Islands in the closing days of World War II.
Gordon, 33, a native of Albert Lea, Minn., is a veteran of 13 years with United Press International. A graduate of the University of Minnesota, he joined UPI in Minneapolis in 1971 and worked in Chicago before transferring to UPI's Washington bureau in 1977.
His EPA scandal exposes also won Gordon a second place in this year's Edward J. Meeman awards for conservation reporting given by the Scripps-Howard Foundation.
Calling the yearlong series 'investigative reporting at its finest,' UPI Managing Editor Ronald E. Cohen said, 'Gordon's stories on the EPA scandals led reporters from both print and electronic media constantly.
'His stories were balanced, fair, well-researched,' Cohen added. 'UPI feels his coverage was a major factor leading to the top-to-bottom overhaul of the Environmental Protection Agency.'
While covering the Justice Department and law enforcement agencies for UPI, Gordon handled such stories as Abscam, Korean influence buying, the Billy Carter furor and the inquiry into Jimmy Carter's peanut warehouse financing.
Gordon was named UPI's special investigative reporter in January 1981. His first major project was a five-part, 12,000-word expose on race horse druggings and other track abuses titled 'Crisis in the Sport of Kings.'
The series was carried by newspapers and broadcasters across the nation and won a certificate of appreciation from the Humane Society of the United States.
Earlier this year, after a lengthy investigation, he wrote a 10-part series detailing massive abuses of government travel privileges by Congress, the military and the executive branch.
