This evening, the Journalism School is presenting the Maria Moors Cabot Prizes, but only three of the four winners will be in attendance. The fourth, blogger Yoani Sanchez, will have to spend the night in her homeland of Cuba, where the one-party government has refused to let the dissident blogger leave. 

Sanchez’s Generation Y is perhaps the best-known Cuban dissident blog, receiving over 14 million hits per month. As the J-School’s original press release put it, “Sanchez, a 34-year-old philologist, pursues her craft with ingenuity, scarce resources and an enormous amount of guts; buying a few minutes here and there on one of the few internet-connected computers available to Cubans in Havana, quickly downloading and emailing her written and video comments to devoted supporters who post the blog in 15 languages.”

Unfortunately, Sanchez’s blog is often blocked even for the 2.1% of Cubans that do have access to the internet, and the government remains wary of the growing number of anti-Castro bloggers. Since the freedom to blog hits rather close to home with us, we’ll forgo the snark and just echo J-School Dean Nicholas Lemann’s comments: “The Cuban government ought to value Ms. Sánchez’s work as a sign that young Cubans are ready to take Cuba into a better future — one that will have the free press the Cuban people deserve.”

– Photo: ceslava/Flickr