NEW YORK CITY — The AMERICAN GUILD OF ORGANISTS (AGO) bestowed its President’s Award on Craig R. Whitney at the Annual Meeting of the AGO on Friday, July 9, in Los Angeles, Calif. The prestigious award is presented biennially, in conjunction with the AGO National Convention, to recognize outstanding contributions to the art of the organ in the United States. The 2004 award was presented by AGO President Frederick Swann acknowledging the "journalist, author, lecturer, and musician who has enthusiastically promoted the King of Instruments to a new generation by chronicling the rich history and evolution of the pipe organ, and by celebrating the lives of builders, composers, and performers." Swann continued, "The organ world is indeed fortunate to have a spokesperson as prominent and as eloquent as Craig Whitney. His national and international writings have shown that the organ and its music are a vital and viable force in the 21st century, just as they have been in centuries past."

CRAIG R. WHITNEY has worked as reporter and foreign correspondent for The New York Times in New York, Saigon, Bonn, Moscow, Paris, and London. He has served as European diplomatic correspondent, foreign editor, and Washington editor, and is currently an assistant managing editor of The New York Times in New York City. He has written about and played on organs around the world. He is author of All the Stops: The Glorious Pipe Organ and Its American Masters (PublicAffairs 2003) and Spy Trader (Times Books/Random House 1993).

Born on October 12, 1943, in Milford, Mass., Whitney received a A.B. degree (magna cum laude) in French history and literature from Harvard College in 1965. He got his start in journalism as a reporter on The Worcester (Mass.) Telegram, between 1963 and 1965.

Whitney was named assistant managing editor for late operations of The New York Times in January 2000, after five years as chief of the Paris bureau. He was appointed the European diplomatic correspondent in Bonn in September 1992, after having served as a senior writer since January 1990. He was bureau chief in London from September 1988 to June 1992, when he was part of the paper’s coverage of the fall of Communism, and Washington editor from December 1986 to September 1988. He was an assistant managing editor from September 1983 to 1986.

In April 1982, Whitney was named foreign editor after being appointed deputy foreign editor in October 1980. He was bureau chief in Moscow from 1977 to 1980, and in Bonn from 1973 to 1977. From 1971 to 1973, Whitney served first as correspondent and then as bureau chief in Saigon, where he covered the 1972 North Vietnamese offensive and the short-lived cease-fire of February 1973.

Whitney joined the Times in June 1965 as an assistant to James Reston in the Washington bureau. He remained with the Times until May 1966 when he joined the Navy, serving three years as a public affairs officer in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy in Washington, D.C., and with Commander, Seventh Fleet, Detachment "C" in Saigon. He was discharged as a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve in 1969. He then rejoined the Times and worked on the metropolitan desk until 1971.

An amateur organist, Whitney studied with Henry Hokans, Melville Smith, Lorene Banta, and John Ferris. He and his wife have two children.