Eleanor Klibanoff

Recipient of the STAR REPORTER OF THE YEAR award in The Charles E. Green Awards (2023)

Eleanor Klibanoff
TEXAS TRIBUNE

Judge’s Comments:

Eleanor Klibanoff is the total package. In an excellent field, her work on women’s health stands out for its depth of reporting, historical and political sweep, and for the utter surefootedness of the writing. Her pacing, and wit can beguile and surprise. In a story on East Texas becoming a maternal care desert, she wrote, that a nurse in a Jasper hospital that had closed its labor and delivery unit was confronted with two urgent cases: “Briefly, Kalafatis let the anger in. She’d tried to warn about the consequences of losing the last labor and delivery unit in this five-county region larger than the state of Connecticut. Now, just as she’d predicted, lives were on the line. But anger wasn’t going to deliver these babies. Kalafatis took a deep breath and got to work.”  Klibanoff’s ability to tell a complex story with great narrative drive is in every passage of the three-part series for the Tribune that shows how Texas has helped shift jurisprudence in the United States to the political right, reshaping the federal judiciary: “Twenty years ago, when they felt the judiciary was tilted against them, conservatives railed against activism from the bench. Now, with the superhighway from the Texas Office of the Attorney General straight to the high court almost fully constructed, they’re enjoying the spoils of a judiciary increasingly stacked in their favor.” Finally, Klibanoff’s full narrative powers are on display in the agonizing story of Miranda Michel in a story bearing the headline, “She was told her twin sons wouldn’t survive. Texas law made her give birth anyway.” Told with power and deep empathy, the story is an urgent and important piece about how the politics of abortion plays out in the lives of ordinary people. This is excellence on every level, and it convinced me that Eleanor Klibanoff should receive this year’s Reporter of the Year award.

John R. Schwartz
The University of Texas, Professor of Practice

Judge’s Bio:
John Schwartz is a professor of practice in journalism at the University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism Media, and the associate director of the university’s Global Sustainability Leadership Institute.

He began his teaching career in 2021. From 2000 until July 2021, he worked at the New York Times, primarily as a science writer. He spent the last seven years there as part of the newspaper’s dozen-person team covering climate coverage. The Times initially hired him to cover technology; his later beats included the U.S. space program, including the loss of the shuttle Columbia and its crew, Hurricane Katrina and the efforts to rebuild hurricane protection around the city, and legal affairs. Over his years at the Times, his reporting took him from Moscow to the Mojave Desert, and involved everything from riding a mud-spewing dredge on the Mississippi River to climbing to the top of a 300-foot wind turbine to strapping into a jet pack. From 1993 until 2000, at the Washington Post, he reported on topics that included federal efforts to regulate the tobacco industry, the Unabomber case, and the school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas. At the NYT and WP, he wrote stories for nearly every section of the newspaper. From 1985 until 1993, he worked at Newsweek Magazine, ultimately becoming a senior editor in the business section.

He has written several books, including "Oddly Normal: One Family's Struggle to Help Their Teenage Son Come to Terms with His Sexuality," and "This Is the Year I Put My Financial Life in Order.”

He was born in Galveston, Texas, and graduated from the University of Texas and its law school. He is the son of the late A.R. “Babe” Schwartz, a former Texas state senator, and the late Marilyn Schwartz, a civic official and businesswoman. He is married to his college sweetheart, Jeanne Mixon. They have three children who live in Texas, in New Jersey and in Australia, and two grandchildren.

To see photos from Eleanor Klibanoff’s prize-winning portfolio, please click the links below:

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