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 two journalists and two outlets that undertook path-breaking and in-depth reporting in 2024. The Izzy Award 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.
Steve Mellon (Pittsburgh Union Progress) and Maximillian Alvarez (The Real News Network) collaborated on stories regarding East Palestine, Ohio to expose the toxic environment harming residents long after the 2023 train derailment; Jewish Currents provided in-depth coverage of Gaza and the related injustices, inequalities, and threats to democracy posed abroad and here at home; and the San Francisco Public Press investigated how the U.S. Navy conducted unethical radiation experiments on the public for years without their knowledge.
Steve Mellon and Maximillian Alvarez
While corporate media covered the catastrophe in East Palestine, Ohio with aerial views of ruined train cars and plumes of smoke likening the horrific crash to a disaster film, Steve Mellon of the Pittsburgh Union Progress and Maximillian Alvarez of The Real News Network were on the ground telling the stories of people in the communities devastated by the deadly toxins released into their neighborhoods long after major media outlets left them behind. One of this year’s judges remarked, “Mellon and Alvarez know how to report compellingly about people and their struggles, offering a perspective on storytelling rarely seen in the establishment press.”
The short documentary produced by The Real News Network features heart-wrenching testimonials of illness and medical bills, and the mobilization of community members to hold the government and railway industry accountable. The judges remarked, “No stranger to the ways and means to fight for justice, as Mellon digs into the human story, he ties it to the essential work of local journalism and the need to spend time with the people most affected, documenting their on-going struggle as they come together to demand basic human rights.” In these stories we see ways to build trust across political divides and come together united as a community.
Jewish Currents
In article after article, Jewish Currents’ writers have dissected the stoking of Jewish victimhood and the weaponization of anti-Semitism.
They have fearlessly chronicled the wave of repression against US supporters of Palestinian rights. And they have offered searing essays evoking the slaughter in Gaza, such as Sarah Aziza’s “The Work of Witness,” which describes the agony of watching Gaza’s citizen journalists as they “confront a world in which their genocide garners millions of witnesses, and yet continues apace.” The judges said this nearly 80-year-old publication, relaunched in 2018, “has proved an essential counterpoint to a restrictive, even repressive, public conversation about Jewish politics, culture, and identity. Jewish Currents’ frank and critical coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza — and its repercussions in the United States — recalls the best of I.F. Stone.”
San Francisco Public Press
An eight-part multi-media investigative series by the San Francisco Public Press, “Exposed: The Human Radiation Experiments at Hunters Point,” exemplifies the in-depth, social justice-driven, investigative journalism for which I.F. Stone is celebrated. The story uncovers how the U.S. Navy conducted unethical and dangerous radiation experiments at the San Francisco Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory from 1946 to 1963 on at least 1,073 people without their informed consent. The investigative team’s reporting was based on painstaking research, including years spent piecing together 24 distinct studies by combing through 621 linear feet of records at the National Archives, filing FOIA requests with federal agencies, and consulting scientific experts to interpret outdated mid-20th-century radiation terminology. Many documents were degraded, incomplete, heavily redacted, or reclassified by the government, requiring tremendous effort to acquire and decipher critical evidence.
The reporting is narrated through multimedia storytelling, featuring a wide range of experts as well as the voices of the marginalized communities most affected, including veterans, people of color and blue-collar workers. The judges commented, “In the spirit of Izzy Stone, the journalists’ dogged reporting brought to light a profound injustice and helped galvanize community activism and potential lawsuits. The San Francisco Public Press embodies the very best accountability journalism that we so desperately need today: local, independent, and nonprofit.”
This year’s judges included the founder of PCIM and FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) Jeff Cohen, previous PCIM director Raza Rumi, associate director of PCIM Todd Schack, investigative journalism editor Esther Kaplan, media policy professor Victor Pickard, former chair of Ithaca College politics department Patricia Rodriguez, and media studies professor emerita Robin Andersen. The nominations and judging process were overseen by current PCIM director Mickey Huff and Marcy Sutherland, PCIM’s Communication and Research Coordinator.
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 will be recorded and is free and open to the public.
Contact mhuff2@ithaca.edu or msutherland1@ithaca.edu at PCIM for interviews or other queries. For more information on the Park Center for Independent Media, visit parkindymedia.org/ and ithaca.edu/indy.