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Maria Moors Cabot Prizes

international journalism award given by Columbia University

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 31, 2026
Entity authorityQ2113 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Maria Moors Cabot Prizes are the oldest international awards in the field of journalism. They are presented each fall by the Trustees of Columbia University to journalists in the Western hemisphere who are viewed as having made a significant contributions to upholding freedom of the press in the Americas and Inter-American understanding. Since 2003, the prize can be awarded to an organization instead of an individual.

History

The American Boston industrialist and philanthropist, Godfrey Lowell Cabot, who founded the Cabot Corporation and was also a major benefactor of both MIT and Harvard, where the general science library is named in his honor, established the Maria Moors Cabot Prizes in 1938, in memory of his wife. The prizes have been awarded annually since 1939, by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, on recommendation of the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism and the Cabot Prize Board, which is composed of journalists and educators.

Board

The awards board consists of the following persons:

Tracy Wilkinson, from the Los Angeles Times where she covered the Iraq War, among others.

Carlos Dada, Salvadoran journalist, founder and director of El Faro. He won the Maria Moors Cabot Prize in 2011.

John Dinges, The Godfrey Lowell Cabot Professor of Journalism at Columbia University is an author and journalist specializing in Latin America. He received a Maria Moors Cabot Prizes medal in 1992.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Maria Moors Cabot Prizes” as international journalism award given by Columbia University. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Maria, Moors and Cabot.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2003, 1938, 1939, 2011—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Maria, Moors and Cabot providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Maria Moors Cabot Prizes”, the useful work is to connect “international journalism award given by Columbia University” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2113. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2003, 1938, 1939 and 2011.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Maria Moors Cabot Prizes”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Maria Moors Cabot Prizes primary sources, Maria Moors Cabot Prizes archive and Maria research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Maria Moors Cabot Prizes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.