BIRN Romanian Fellow Wins Top Journalism Award

He was awarded for the stories: “Forged Identity – highway to EU” and "The Fields of Terror - the New Slave Trade in the Heart of Europe", a joint production of Romanian, Moldavian and Ukrainian journalists under Adrian Mogos' coordination.

The jury said Adrian Mogos provided an excellent in-depth investigation into issues of compelling importance. They felt he showed great initiative, persistence and ingenuity, backed up with excellent research to expose human rights violations.

Mogos is a 2009 fellow of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, an initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and ERSTE Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN.

He is currently working for the Romanian daily Jurnalul National. He is a member of the executive committee of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism. In July he won the CEI SEEMO Award for Outstanding Merits in Investigative Journalism.

The 2010 Kurt Schork Awards for International Journalism will also honour freelancer Stephen Grey from the UK.

The awards ceremony, which will be held at the Thomson Reuters headquarters Wednesday November 3, will be followed by a reception and panel discussion.

This year’s Schork jury included Jeremy Bowen of the BBC, John Burns of The New York Times, Sir Harold Evans, author and former editor of The Times and The Sunday Times, Rana Husseini, author and human rights activist, and Michela Wrong, freelance journalist and author.