McClatchy reports that McClatchy Bureau Chief wins Nieman Foundation award

WASHINGTON — John Walcott, the chief of McClatchy’s Washington Bureau, was named on Thursday the first recipient of the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence, sponsored by Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism.

Walcott was honored for leading a team of reporters whose skeptical coverage of the Bush administration’s claims about Iraq’s weapons programs in the months before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 was largely unmatched by other news outlets — and also largely ignored by policymakers.

“This is belated recognition of the powerful work done by Walcott in directing his colleagues in developing stories that were unappreciated and almost totally unnoticed at the time,” Bob Giles, the Nieman Foundation’s curator, said in announcing the award. “Because so many journalists fell short in their pre-Iraq war coverage, there’s a real need to recognize this dogged editor who went about his business in a resolute way to challenge many of the justifications for the war that proved to be false.”
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Dolly is coming to the end of her life cycle having caused most of the damage she can.  People can now get out and see the mess.

As usual it is the water, not the wind that’s the problem, with flooding likely to continue because of over 20 inches of rain in some areas.  Dolly is a relatively slow moving storm and it is still drawing moisture from the Gulf.

The small towns on the coast received the worse of the wind damage, but roofs were lost inland.

There are no reports of deaths, but it is early yet, and the storm is moving across rural areas.

It’s time for the chainsaws and big piles of debris.