The Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) at Ithaca College is honored to announce that this year’s Izzy Award “for outstanding achievement in independent media” will be shared by three journalists and two outlets that undertook path-breaking and in-depth reporting in 2024. Winners will attend a cerebration for their reporting at Ithaca College April 30. Each of the winners will give a 12–15-minute presentation at the event.
The presentation of the Izzy Award will take place on Wednesday, April 30, at 7 P.M. in Emerson Suites at Ithaca College. The event is free and open to the public. It will also be recorded and livestreamed.
The first two individuals are Steve Mellon (Pittsburgh Union Progress) and Maximillian Alvarez (The Real News Network). They collaborated on stories regarding East Palestine, Ohio to expose the toxic environment harming residents long after the catastrophic 2023 train derailment there. Mellon’s reporting from the community and Alvarez’s subsequent documentary short, Trainwreck in ‘Trump Country’: Partisan politics hasn’t helped East Palestine, OH, amplified the voices of people harmed by the preventable incident and followed how they bridged political divides to come together long after the corporate media’s spectacle coverage moved on to the next disaster. Their reporting helped shine a light on the dark times community residents continue to experience while the government and corporate railway companies have left them behind.
The Izzy judges also recognized the work of Mohammed Mhawish, a journalist from Gaza City who fled to Cairo, Egypt, writing at The Nation, for his coverage of the ongoing attacks on the Palestinian civilian population. Mhawish contributed numerous first-hand accounts from the frontlines of the conflict, documenting his lived experience, and the dangerous toll it has taken on his people and him personally. He writes, “More than ever, I feel a responsibility to share the untold, the censored, and the ignored truths that don’t make it to the front pages…I’ve seen how the headlines too often fail to tell the full story of Palestinian life—not only those of death tolls and numbers of the injured—but stories of resilience too, survival, life, and the people’s tireless fight for freedom and insistence on living.” *We will share Mhawish’s prerecorded virtual acceptance address at the event.
In addition, two independent media outlets were also recognized by the judges with an Izzy this year for their incredible in-depth reporting on major historical issues that persist in the present.
Jewish Currents provided in-depth coverage of Gaza and the related injustices, inequalities, and threats to democracy posed abroad and here at home, including the weaponization of antisemitism. Alex Kane, senior reporter for Jewish Currents, will represent the publication for the award and discuss his work delving into the now bipartisan government crackdowns on civil liberties, free speech, and the right to protest public policy in the US. Kane’s reporting looked at how “pro-Israel groups have remade Title VI into a tool of repression–and a second Trump term will supercharge their crusade.” Several other reports around Israel/Gaza were part of the nomination for Jewish Currents this year, all providing expanded historical context and perspectives often missing from establishment media outlets in the US despite their importance and factual nature.
The San Francisco Public Press (SFPP) investigated how the U.S. Navy conducted unethical radiation experiments on the public for years without their knowledge. In their series “Exposed: The Human Radiation Experiments at Hunters Point,” Michael Stoll, Rebecca Bowe, and Chris Roberts and their team at SFPP, “sifted through thousands of pages of obscure records, interviewed experts and tracked down elderly veterans who were subjected to ethically questionable radiation exposure by the U.S. Navy in San Francisco during the Cold War.” The series illuminates the human toll and connects this to modern environmental justice issues in Bayview-Hunters Point, a historically Black and low-income neighborhood encompassing the old Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, which is now a Superfund site. SFPP’s reporting led to more local activism and information gathering that has culminated in a recent class-action lawsuit for victims and their descendants who suffer from the contamination. Stoll, Bowe, and Roberts will accept the Izzy for SFPP.
The 17th Annual Izzy Award ceremony will be held Wednesday April 30th, 7 P.M. in Emerson Suites, Campus Center, at Ithaca College. The event is free and open to the public. It will also be recorded and livestreamed. Stay tuned for more details at ParkIndyMedia.org. This year’s celebration is co-sponsored by Project Censored, Project Look Sharp, and the Journalism Department at Ithaca College.
The Izzy Award “for outstanding achievement in independent media” is named after I. F. “Izzy” Stone, the muckraking journalist who launched I.F. Stone’s Weekly in 1953 and challenged McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, racial injustice, and government deceit.
Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodation for any of these events should reach out to Marcy Sutherland at msutherland1@ithaca.edu. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.
For more information, please contact Marcy Sutherland or Mickey Huff at msutherland1@ithaca.edu or mhuff2@ithaca.edu.