As Reuters North America Pictures Editor, Corinne Perkins was awarded the Baron Award on March 19, honouring her integrity and journalistic excellence while covering mainstream media events like the COVID-19 pandemic, US election and wild fires from New York.

Ms Perkins won the award for keeping her focus on providing a picture file from across North America that won praise for its quality, breadth, and speed. Judges said Ms Perkins "exemplified the qualities needed in a Reuters editor today - inclusive and analytical news judgement, self-confidence, persistence, customer focus, integrity, courage, and attention to all editorial assets, not just Pictures."

Ms Perkins said her team recorded history for a year that was unlike any other.

"It was a relentless news year, going from one thing to the next and my job was to manage the photographers in North America. Throughout last year my job was to keep them safe and think about the safety precautions of every assignment," Ms Perkins said.

"I had to keep them motivated to document stories that were important; from the pandemic, to the push for racial justice after George Floyd was killed, through the election, huge wild fires on the west coast and hurricanes. it was one of those years that nobody had seen this cycle of news before, where every week was something else.

"The photographers job is one that cannot be done remotely, so a lot of our reporters and producers could work from home, but the photographers had to be in the field. So they took on a huge amount of responsibility for pictures but also video and text. They were the eyes and ears of the whole country and because of the way I managed the team, was why I was awarded the Baron Award."

The Baron Award is not presented annually but only when an excellence in journalism is displayed. The former recipient of the Baron Award were two Reuters journalists who were imprisoned for a year and a half for reporting the truth on the Massacre in Myanmar.

"It is a huge honour. I was told I had received the award in January and I was very teary eyed. It is a great acknowledgement if the work I have put in over the last year, but also what the team have done," Ms Perkins said.

"I'd like to thank the whole US photo team this is a recognition of your work. This is not my award, this is a teams award and I am just lucky and honoured to be a part of what they do.

"I have been a part of Reuters Pictures department for 20 years. During that time I have seen the work colleagues can produce and I am in a position where I get to work alongside some of the best in the business and be a part of what they do.

"For me and the team to be recognised for that it feels like we are visible, that we are doing is important and that the company appreciates that."

Ms Perkins said during the peak of the US COVID-19 outbreak, coverage was surreal.

"For the two months when the peak was in New York all you could hear was ambulance sirens wailing day-in-day-out.

"Our photographers were camped outside of hospitals photographing refrigerated morgue trucks and bodies being piled up.

"We had incredible drone images from Hart Island where they were putting bodies of the unclaimed because of the number of deaths in the city. They had a huge amount of workers just putting in coffin after coffin and was basically a mass grave in the heart of New York city.

"Our photographers were on the ground throughout it all, providing necessary content to our audience during a time of isolation and uncertainty."

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