NOVANEWS
By Jeff Baker, The Oregonian
March 15, 2010, 3:33PM
Portland writer and cartoonist Joe Sacco won the $10,000 Ridenhour Book Prize, given in honor of Ron Ridenhour, a Vietnam veteran who helped expose the My Lai massacre and later became an award-winning investigative journalist.
Sacco won for “Footnotes in Gaza,” an investigation into a 1956 mass killing in Gaza that Sacco learned about in 2001. The Ridenhour Prize citation said “Footnotes in Gaza” is “a work of profound social significance, one that explores the complex continuum of history. At a time when peace in the Middle East has never seemed more elusive, Sacco’s illustrations bear witness to the lives of those who are trapped by the conflict.”
Other winners include Howard Zinn, who was posthumously awarded the Ridenhour Courage Prize, and Matthew Hoh, a State Department official in Afghanistan who questioned the war in that country and resigned in protest.