Nominations Open for 10th Annual “Izzy Award” for Independent Media

By David Maley, December 12, 2017

Nominations Open for 10th Annual “Izzy Award” for Independent Media

With the Izzy Award set to celebrate its 10th year, award nominations are now open for work produced in the calendar year 2017.

The annual honor for outstanding achievement in independent media — named after legendary journalist I. F. “Izzy” Stone — is a project of the Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) at Ithaca College.

This year’s Izzy Award will be given for work published, broadcast or posted in 2017 by an independent media outlet, journalist or producer. The award may relate to a single piece or a body of work. Journalists, academics and the public at large may submit nominations by the January 11, 2018, deadline. The judges may also nominate. The winner will be announced early next spring, with an award ceremony to follow.

Nominations should be submitted via a brief email (250 words or less) that includes supporting web links (no more than six) and/or attached materials to Brandy Hawley at bhawley@ithaca.edu. For more information on the Izzy Award, visit www.ithaca.edu/indy/izzy.

Past winners include Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, Jeremy Scahill, Naomi Klein, John Carlos Frey and independent news sources such as “City Limits” and “Mother Jones.”

Izzy Award winners are chosen by a panel of judges with expertise in independent media. Joining PCIM director Jeff Cohen on the panel for the 10th year in a row are communications professor and author Robert W. McChesney and Linda Jue, executive director and editor at the G. W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism.

“In a year when some media outlets focused more on presidential tweets and antics than on life-or-death policy issues,” said PCIM’s Cohen, “independent outlets have given an intense focus to issues of political corruption, racism, immigration, environmental impacts and human rights abuses. Independent journalists and institutions are more important than ever.”

In 1953, during the height of the anti-communist witch hunts, Stone launched “I. F. Stone’s Weekly,” through which he challenged McCarthyism, official deceit, war and racism. A recent documentary – “All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception and the Spirit of I. F. Stone” – features many past Izzy Award winners. Ithaca College houses a unique collection of mementos from Stone, who died in 1989.

Launched in 2008 and located within Ithaca College’s Roy H. Park School of Communications, PCIM is a national center focusing on media outlets that create and distribute content outside traditional corporate systems and news organizations.