2023-04-27T18:30:00
The Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College will present this year’s Izzy Award “for outstanding achievement in independent media” at 6:30 p.m. EDT on Thursday, April 27, during a virtual award ceremony. Attendees will hear speeches from the winners and are invited to participate in a Q&A.
This 15th annual Izzy Award will be shared by nonprofit news outlets The Lever and Mississippi Free Press for exposing government corruption and giving voice to marginalized communities; journalist Carlos Ballesteros for uncovering police and immigration malfeasance; and Liza Gross for reporting Big Oil’s influence on California agriculture.
A four-part investigation by The Lever followed the cash behind a $1.6 billion donation from a Chicago businessman to a conservative political advocacy nonprofit — the largest known dark money transfer in history.
Mississippi Free Press worked to improve public access to open records in the state and uncovered how University of Mississippi officials gave power to wealthy alumni despite open expressions of racism.
Alongside Injustice Watch, Carlos Ballesteros revealed and spurred government action on Chicago police’s arbitrary denials of U visas, a path to citizenship for undocumented victims of crime.
Liza Gross with Inside Climate News investigated how the oil-industrial complex sold wastewater to farms in Kern County, California, despite the impact of toxic chemicals on crops and soil.
The Izzy Award is named for I. F. “Izzy” Stone, the dissident journalist who launched I. F. Stone’s Weekly in 1953 and questioned McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, racial injustice, and government deceit.
Launched in 2008 within the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College, the Park Center for Independent Media is a center for the study of journalism-oriented media outlets that create and distribute content outside traditional corporate systems and news organizations.
Read more information on the award winners here.
Read about previous winners of the Izzy Award here.