WATERVILLE, Maine (AP) — Two Ukrainians who documented the horrors of the Russian invasion and siege of Mariupol for The Associated Press will be honored for their bravery with Colby College’s Lovejoy Award.
Mstyslav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka continued to report on the Russian invasion after other international journalists left Mariupol, an industrial city on the Sea of Azov. They made a harrowing escape to share their images with the world.
The liberal arts college honors them with the award named after Elijah Parish Lovejoy alumnus, an abolitionist newspaper publisher who was murdered by a mob for his anti-slavery editorials in 1837.
“Just as Elijah Lovejoy risked his life to expose atrocities, Mstyslav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka knew that showing the world what was happening in Mariupol was a cause worth the ultimate sacrifice,” Colby College President David Greene said in a statement. .
Martin Kaiser, chairman of Lovejoy’s selection committee, retired editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and current journalism faculty member at the University of Maryland, said the couple’s sacrifices represented “the definition of courage for journalists.”
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“It’s the fastest we’ve ever come to a decision,” he said of his decade on the selection committee. “The courage these two photographers showed is what the Lovejoy Award is all about.”
The award was presented Friday at an event that included a discussion moderated by AP Global Investigations editor Ron Nixon and Brian Carovillano of NBC News, who was vice president and managing editor of The Associated Press, while Chernov and Maloletka reported from Mauripol.
Chernov and Maloletka, who were unable to attend the event in person, are the first visual journalists to receive the Lovejoy Award, which Colby College began awarding in 1952.
Previous winners include a who’s who of American journalism, including The Washington Post’s Watergate scandal reporter Bob Woodward, former New York Times reporter James Risen and former Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker.
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