Award winning journalist David Crary is the recipient of the 2023 Randy Shilts Award for LGBTQ+ Coverage, which honors journalists who consistently bring stories of the LGBTQ+ community to life in mainstream media outlets.
“David Crary has consistently produced high-quality and insightful stories that foreground LGBTQ+ communities and individuals, regardless of the beat or coverage area,” said NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists Executive Director Adam Pawlus. ”Through his work at The Associated Press, he has helped set the standard for what fair and accurate coverage looks like. We are proud to recognize him for his work.”
Crary has been a reporter, editor and bureau chief with The Associated Press during a four-decade career entailing a variety of postings in the U.S. and abroad. Until mid-2021, he was a national writer based in New York, primarily reporting on volatile social issues, including scores of in-depth features about a variety of LGBTQ+ topics. More recently, he has been news director of AP’s global religion team.
Beyond his own reporting, Crary has been active over the years in improving AP’s company-wide coverage of LGBTQ+ issues and related material in the AP Stylebook. In 2013, when Stylebook editors suggested that married same-sex couples should be referred to as “partners” rather than as husbands or wives, Crary’s public objection to that guidance helped lead to a reversal. “The AP style guidance will have no effect on how I write about legally married same-sex couples,” Crary told blogger Rex Wockner. “I will continue to depict them on equal terms, linguistically and otherwise, with heterosexual married couples, with no hesitation about using husband and wife in the cases where that’s the appropriate term.”
His coverage has been recognized many times over. In 2000, he became the first man to win the General Federation of Women’s Clubs annual award for excellence in covering issues of concern to women. His 2006 article about gay and lesbian people in Alabama was honored with a second-place award for Excellence in News Writing by NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists. In 2022, Crary and AP colleague Lindsay Whitehurst shared GLAAD’s Award for Outstanding Print Article for a story about the lack of evidence justifying bans on transgender youths’ sports participation.