Byron Allen to Receive Dressler Leadership Award at 2024 Mirror Awards

Byron Allen, the founder, chairman and CEO of Allen Media Group, will receive the Fred Dressler Leadership Award at the 2024 Mirror Awards on June 13 in New York City.

Headquartered in Los Angeles,  Allen Media Group  owns 27 ABC-NBC-CBS-FOX network affiliate broadcast television stations in 21 U.S. markets and 12 24-hour HD television networks serving nearly 300 million subscribers. Allen Media Group is the first African American-owned multi-platform media company producing and distributing wide-release motion pictures and content for all platforms.

The Dressler Award is given to individuals or organizations that have made distinct and consistent contributions to the public’s understanding of the media. Past recipients include: Judy Woodruff, senior correspondent at PBS; Jorge Ramos, anchor with Univision Noticias; Sheila Nevins, executive producer and former president of HBO Documentary Films and Family for Home Box Office; legendary journalist Tom Brokaw of NBC; and Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times.

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, an award-winning nonprofit digital newsroom in Memphis, Tennessee, focused on the intersection of poverty, power and policy, will be honored with the Lorraine Branham IDEA Award. Accepting the award will be founding editor and publisher Wendi C. Thomas.

Established in 2021 in honor of late Newhouse Dean Emerita Lorraine Branham, the IDEA Award recognizes a media organization that has worked to promote inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility over the previous year. Specifically, the award acknowledges the hiring and development of leadership talent who create change, both to the organizations they oversee and the content they produce. The inaugural Lorraine Branham IDEA Award went to Brown Girls Doc Mafia. Previous recipients also include The 19th News and Amplifier.

Master of Ceremonies

CNN anchor and national correspondent Erica Hill will serve as master of ceremonies for the evening. An award-winning journalist and veteran of morning TV news , Hill most recently anchored HLN’s “On the Story with Erica Hill,” a daily, New York-based daytime news program. 

During her CNN tenure, Hill co-hosted six CNN/Sesame Street Town Hall specials for families about COVID-19, one of which earned the network’s first-ever Daytime Emmy Award nomination. Hill was also part of an NBC News team that won a Peabody Award in 2013. Two years later, the Alliance for Women in Media honored her with the Gracie Award for Outstanding Correspondent.

About the Mirror Awards

The Dressler and IDEA awards are the featured non-juried prizes at the annual Mirror Awards event. The ceremony will be held again this year at the Edison Ballroom in midtown Manhattan.

Established by the Newhouse School in 2006, the Mirror Awards honor the reporters, editors and teams of writers who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit.

The competition is open to anyone who conducts reporting, commentary or criticism of the media industries in a format intended for a mass audience. Eligible work includes print, broadcast and online editorial content focusing on the development or distribution of news and entertainment. Winners are chosen by a group of journalists and journalism educators.

Newhouse School Announces Finalists in 2024 Mirror Awards Competition

Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications today announced the finalists in the 2024 Mirror Awards competition honoring excellence in media industry reporting. Winners will be announced June 13 at an awards ceremony in New York City.

The finalists, selected by a group of journalists and journalism educators, are:

Best Single Article/Story

• Lauren Theisen, “Autostraddle Is Spiraling Toward A Shutdown Or A Sale” (PDF) – Defector
• Jon Marcus, “Why Retired Journalists Are Jumping Back into the Profession” – Nieman Reports
• Laura Wagner, “A crackdown on ‘woke’ coverage is tearing Atlanta magazine apart” (PDF) – The Washington Post
• Paige Williams, “A Small-Town Paper Lands A Very Big Story” (PDF) – The New Yorker

Best Profile

• Elaina Plott Calabro, “A Star Reporter’s Break With Reality” (PDF) – The Atlantic
• Tim Alberta, “Inside the Meltdown at CNN” (PDF) -The Atlantic
• Emily Sohn, “The Catch” – Long Lead
• Maddy Crowell, “The Hacker” – Columbia Journalism Review

Best Commentary

• Micah Loewinger, “On the Media’s Series on the Collapse of Digital Media” – On the Media
  • “Has the Podcast Bubble Finally Burst?“
  • “Is The New York Times A Tech Company?“
  • “The Rise of Worker-Owned Journalism“
• Lydia Polgreen, “It’s Not a Good Sign When People Who Don’t Pay for News Have So Little to Choose From” (PDF) – The New York Times
• Melanie McFarland, “A dude and a desk: Why women really don’t get to host late-night TV” – Salon
• James Rainey, “Capturing the media industry’s remorseless change” – Los Angeles Times
  • “The California newspaper that has no reporters left” (PDF)
  • “Santa Cruz ‘news desert’? An industry guru’s digital startup challenges local rivals” (PDF)
  • “Tavis Smiley’s #MeToo exile didn’t last. Inside his comeback on L.A. radio” (PDF)

John M. Higgins Award for Best In-Depth/Enterprise Reporting

• Ronan Farrow, “Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule” (PDF) – The New Yorker
• David Folkenflik, “A Reporter’s Ouster Exposes Political Pressure on West Virginia Public Broadcasting” (PDF) – NPR NEWS
• Jeremy W. Peters, Jim Rutenberg, Katie Robertson and Michael S. Schmidt, “Fox’s Costly Miscalculation” – The New York Times
  • “How Hard Lines in Fox-Dominion Deal Talks Suddenly Softened” (PDF)
  • “Carlson’s Text That Alarmed Fox Leaders: ‘It’s Not How White Men Fight’” (PDF)
  • “Missteps and Miscalculations: Inside Fox’s Legal and Business Debacle” (PDF)
• Sarah Ellison, Amy Gardner, Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Shelly Tan, Derek Hawkins and Blair Guild, “At center of Fox News lawsuit, Sidney Powell and a ‘wackadoodle’ email” – The Washington Post
  • “At center of Fox News lawsuit, Sidney Powell and a ‘wackadoodle’ email” (PDF)
  • “What key players at Fox News said about the network and its viewers” (PDF)
  • “What Tucker Carlson said about Trump in private texts vs. on Fox News” (PDF)

Special Topic Category 1 for 2024 – Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media

• Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson, Katie Robertson, Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur, “Why A.I. Worries the Media” – The New York Times
  • “‘Not for Machines to Harvest’: Data Revolts Break Out Against A.I.” (PDF)
  • “Publishers Worry A.I. Chatbots Will Cut Readership” (PDF)
  • “The People Onscreen Are Fake. The Disinformation Is Real.” (PDF)
• Maggie Harrison Dupré, “Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers” – Futurism                  
• Peter Kafka, “You’re going to see more AI-written articles whether you like it or not” – Vox

Special Topic Category 2 for 2024 – Best Story on Media Coverage of the Israeli-Hamas Conflict

• Charlotte Klein, “’You Don’t Want to Hedge It?’: Inside the New York Times Debate Over Its Gaza Hospital Bombing Coverage” – Vanity Fair
  • “‘You Don’t Want to Hedge It?’: Inside the New York Times Debate Over Its Gaza Hospital Bombing Coverage” (PDF)
  • “‘There Has Never Been Less Tolerance for This’: Inside a New York Times Magazine Writer’s Exit Over Gaza Letter” (PDF)
  • “Fox News’ Trey Yingst on Trying to Get the Israel-Hamas Story Right: ‘There Is No Room for the Fog of War’” (PDF)

• Brooke Gladstone, “The Fog of War Shrouds a Devastating Conflict” – On the Media, WNYC

• Michael M. Grynbaum, Katie Robertson, Jeremy W. Peters and Steven Lee Myers, “Mideast Truth and Fiction” – The New York Times
  • “Harsh Visuals of War Leave Newsrooms Facing Tough Choices” (PDF)
  • “Jewish Viewers Find a Refuge in Fox News” (PDF)
  • “Fact or Fiction? In This War, It Is Hard to Tell.” (PDF)

About the Mirror Awards

The Mirror Awards are the most important awards for recognizing excellence in media industry reporting. Established by the Newhouse School in 2006, the awards honor the reporters, editors and teams of writers who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit. For information about the awards, visit newhouse.syr.edu/mirrorawards or email mirrorawards@syr.edu.  

Photo Gallery: 2023 Mirror Awards

Take a look back at the honorees recognized Monday in New York City, where the Newhouse School celebrated the Mirror Awards. Winners were announced during a dinner at the Edison Ballroom in midtown Manhattan.

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Winners

Newhouse School Announces Winners in 2023 Mirror Awards Competition

Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications announced the winners of the 2023 Mirror Awards at a ceremony Monday night in New York City. The awards recognize excellence in media industry reporting.

Chosen by a group of journalists and journalism educators, the winners are:

Best Single Article/Story

Reniqua Allen-Lamphere
“Her Name Was Shirley”
Esquire and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project

Best Profile

Joe Pompeo
“Far From the Maddow Crowd” (PDF)
Vanity Fair

Best Commentary

Erik Wemple
“Commentary on media issues”
The Washington Post

Submissions:

• “’Calm down,’ libs! A look back at select pieces of Roe commentary”
• “James Bennet was right”
• “News outlets stand by their midterm debacle”

John M. Higgins Award for Best In-Depth/Enterprise Reporting

Nicholas Confessore and Karen Yourish
“Tucker Carlson’s America”
The New York Times

Submissions:

• “How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable” (PDF)
• “How Tucker Carlson Reshaped Fox News – and Became Trump’s Heir” (PDF)
• “Inside the Apocalyptic Worldview of ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’”

Special Topic Category for 2023 – Best Story on Media Coverage of the War in Ukraine

Paul Mozur, Adam Satariano, Aaron Krolik, Neil MacFarquhar, Steven Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson
“Russia’s Disinformation Machine”
The New York Times

Submissions:

• “An Alternate Reality: How Russia’s State TV Spins the Ukraine War” (PDF)
• “What Russians See in the News: A War Over Western Plans to Subjugate Them” (PDF)
• “Truth Is Another Front in Putin’s War” (PDF)

In addition to the juried journalism awards, the Newhouse School presented the Fred Dressler Leadership Award to PBS Newshour senior correspondent Judy Woodruff. She was introduced at the ceremony by Sandra Cordova Micek, president and CEO of WTTW and chair of the Newhouse Advisory Board.

The Lorraine Branham IDEA Award was presented to Amplifier. Accepting on behalf of Amplifier was executive director Emily Goulding, who was introduced by Amplifier board member Anjali Kumar, an advisor, author and attorney.

MSNBC anchor KatyTur and “CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil served as masters of ceremony for this year’s event, which was held at the Edison Ballroom in midtown Manhattan. Newhouse Dean Mark J. Lodato delivered opening and closing remarks.

Established by the Newhouse School in 2006, the Mirror Awards are the most important accolades for recognizing excellence in media industry reporting. They honor the reporters, writers and editors who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit. For more information, visit newhouse.syr.edu/mirrorawards or email mirrorawards@syr.edu. 

MSNBC Anchor Katy Tur, CBS Co-host Tony Dokoupil to Serve as Masters of Ceremony for Newhouse School’s Mirror Awards

Broadcast journalists and anchors Katy Tur and Tony Dokoupil will serve as masters of ceremony when the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications celebrates the Mirror Awards on Monday, June 12 in New York City.

MSNBC anchor Tur and “CBS Mornings” co-host Dokoupil were married after meeting during the 2016 presidential campaign and live in New York City with their children.

Established by the Newhouse School in 2006, the Mirror Awards honor the reporters, editors and writers who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit. Finalists for the competition were announced earlier this month.

Katy Tur

Katy Tur anchors “Katy Tur Reports” weekdays at 3 p.m. ET. An award-winning journalist, Tur emerged as a breakout broadcaster in 2016 while covering the entirety of the Trump campaign across all platforms for NBC News and MSNBC. 

Tur is a New York Times bestselling author of “Rough Draft: A Memoir,” released June 2022 and “Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History” in September 2017. 

An award-winning journalist, Tur received a 2022 Edward R. Murrow Award for Breaking News Coverage of the January 6th insurrection. In her 18 months covering the 2016 presidential election, Tur conducted multiple in-depth interviews with then-candidate Donald Trump. While on the road, she set foot in over 40 states and logged nearly 4,000 live television appearances. In 2017, she received the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism for her reporting on the 2016 election. 

Prior to joining the 2016 political team, Tur was a foreign correspondent based in London for NBC News. She joined the network in 2012 and was initially based in New York. Before that Tur reported for WNBC, The Weather Channel, WPIX and News12 Brooklyn. 

Tur is a native of Los Angeles and graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Follow Tur on Twitter at @KatyTurNBC.

Tony Dokoupil

Dokoupil was named co-host of “CBS Mornings” in 2019. Previously, he was a CBS News correspondent and a “CBS Sunday Morning” contributor, with his reporting appearing across all CBS News broadcasts and platforms. At “CBS Mornings,” Dokoupil has handled numerous high-profile, on-the-ground and anchoring assignments from New York and around the world.

In 2016, Dokoupil joined CBS News after three years at NBC News, where he was a correspondent for MSNBC. He was the network’s lead reporter on high-profile stories like the Paris climate agreement and the Flint water crisis, and also covered the 2016 presidential primaries.

From 2007 to 2013, Dokoupil was a senior writer at Newsweek and The Daily Beast, where his reporting landed him on NBC’s “Today,” ABC’s “20/20” and NPR’s “Fresh Air with Terry Gross.”

Dokoupil is also the author of the critically acclaimed book, “The Last Pirate: A Father, His Son and the Golden Age of Marijuana,” a memoir in which he documented his father’s exploits smuggling marijuana during the 1970s and ‘80s.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University and a master’s degree from Columbia University.

About the Mirror Awards

The Mirror Awards are the most important awards for honoring excellence in media industry reporting. The 2023 Mirror Awards ceremony will be held Monday, June 12, at the Edison Ballroom in New York City. Newhouse Dean Mark J. Lodato will preside over the ceremony, which includes the presentation of five juried journalism awards. For more information, please email mirrorawards@syr.edu.

Amplifier to be Honored with Lorraine Branham IDEA Award at Mirror Awards Ceremony June 12

Amplifier will be honored with the Lorraine Branham IDEA Award from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications June 12. The award, presented as part of the 17th annual Mirror Awards ceremony, will be accepted by executive director Emily Goulding.

Amplifier describes itself as a nonprofit media lab that designs and distributes work intended to engage people in the creation of a more just, inclusive and sustainable future. Drawing from a diverse portfolio of artists to commission visual storytelling, the lab builds art and media experiments and campaigns with the goal of influencing culture and the national narrative.

“As an organization whose mandate is to amplify voices and movements that may otherwise go unheard, Amplifier could not be more thrilled to receive the 2023 Lorraine Branham IDEA Award from the Newhouse School,” Goulding says.  

Amplifier says their experiments are built on a foundation of free and open-source art, the unlimited possibilities within the human-centered design process and the potentials of merging analog and digital technology.

“This recognition by our peers in the media space is deeply gratifying, and furthers our commitment to telling stories that matter, by any medium necessary,” adds Goulding. She will be introduced at the Mirror Awards ceremony by Amplifier board member Anjali Kumar, an advisor, author and attorney.

Amplifier, which is supported by philanthropic partnerships and small donors from across the world, was founded in 2014 by award-winning National Geographic photojournalist Aaron Huey. He has created over 30 stories for the magazine, including several cover stories. Huey’s work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Smithsonian, and dozens of other publications.

About the IDEA Award

The IDEA Award recognizes a media organization that has worked to promote inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility over the previous year. Specifically, the award acknowledges the hiring and development of leadership talent who create change, both to the organizations they oversee and the content they produce. The award was established in honor of the late Lorraine Branham, the first Black woman to serve as dean of the Newhouse School, who died in 2019.

About the Mirror Awards

The Mirror Awards are the most important awards for recognizing excellence in media industry reporting. Established by the Newhouse School in 2006, the awards honor the reporters, editors and writers who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit. Finalists for the competition were announced earlier this month.

The 2023 Mirror Awards ceremony will be held Monday, June 12, at the Edison Ballroom in New York City. Newhouse Dean Mark J. Lodato will preside over the ceremony, which includes the presentation of five juried journalism awards. In addition to the IDEA Award, the Newhouse School will present the Fred Dressler Leadership Award to veteran journalist Judy Woodruff, former anchor and managing editor of the “PBS NewsHour” and now a senior correspondent.

Newhouse School Announces Finalists in 2023 Mirror Awards Competition

Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications today announced the finalists in the 2023 Mirror Awards competition honoring excellence in media industry reporting. Winners will be announced June 12 at an awards ceremony in New York City.

The finalists, selected by a group of journalists and journalism educators, are:

Best Single Article/Story

• Jon Allsop, “The Everything Virus” – Columbia Journalism Review
• Paul Farhi, “‘A newspaper vanished from the internet. Did someone pay to kill it?’” – The Washington Post
• Reniqua Allen-Lamphere, “Her Name Was Shirley” (PDF) – Esquire and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project
• Layla A. Jones, “Lights. Camera. Crime. How a Philly-born brand of TV news harmed Black America.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

Best Profile

• Timothy McLaughlin, “The Tech Site That Took On China’s Surveillance State” (PDF) – The Atlantic
• Sam Adler-Bell, “The Pandemic Interpreter” (PDF) – New York Magazine
• Joe Pompeo, “Far From the Maddow Crowd” (PDF) – Vanity Fair

Best Commentary

• Gregg Gonsalves, “Media Malpractice in Covid Coverage” (PDF) – The Nation
  • “Laughing Ourselves to Death at the Gridiron Dinner”
  • “No, Joe Biden, the Pandemic Is Not Over”
  • “The Death Eaters: Covid in the Liberal Imagination”
• Carrie Kaufman, “Voodoo Journalism” (PDF) -You’re Overthinking It
• Michael Hiltzik, “Column: How the decline of local news exposes the public to lies and corruption” – Los Angeles Times
• Erik Wemple, “Commentary on media issues” – The Washington Post
  • “’Calm down,’ libs! A look back at select pieces of Roe commentary”
  • “James Bennet was right”
  • “News outlets stand by their midterm debacle”
    • Paywall username: wemple
    • Paywall password: wemple

John M. Higgins Award for Best In-Depth/Enterprise Reporting

• Katie Thornton, “The Divided Dial”
  • Episode 1 – “The True Believers”
  • Episode 3 – “The Liberal Bias Boogeyman”
  • Episode 4 – “From The Extreme to The Mainstream”
• Rob Davis, “Publishing Prejudice” (PDF) – The Oregonian/OregonLive
• Sheelah Kolhatkar, “The Perils of Pornhub”- The New Yorker
• Nicholas Confessore and Karen Yourish, “Tucker Carlson’s America” – The New York Times
  • “How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable” (PDF)
  • “How Tucker Carlson Reshaped Fox News – and Became Trump’s Heir” (PDF)
  • “Inside the Apocalyptic Worldview of ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’”

Special Topic Category for 2023 – Best Story on Media Coverage of the War in Ukraine

• Masha Gessen, “Masha Gessen on the War in Ukraine” – The New Yorker
  • “Russia’s Last Independent TV Channel Covers the Invasion of Ukraine”
  • “The War That Russians Do Not See”
  • “Inside Putin’s Propaganda Machine”
• Paul Mozur, Adam Satariano, Aaron Krolik, Neil MacFarquhar, Steven Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson, “Russia’s Disinformation Machine” – The New York Times
  • “An Alternate Reality: How Russia’s State TV Spins the Ukraine War” (PDF)
  • “What Russians See in the News: A War Over Western Plans to Subjugate Them” (PDF)
  • “Truth Is Another Front in Putin’s War” (PDF)
• Molly Schwartz, “Russian TV’s Favorite American Pundit” – On the Media
  • “The Russian TV’s Favorite American Pundit”
  • “Russia’s War”
  • “Ukraine’s Fight”
• Elahe Izadi, Sarah Ellison and Travis M. Andrews, “How Russia and the West covered the war in Ukraine” (PDF) – The Washington Post
  • “Russia’s independent media, long under siege, teeters under new Putin crackdown”
  • “This is how journalists figure out if all those Ukraine videos are real”
  • “‘They seem so like us’: In depicting Ukraine’s plight, some in media use offensive comparisons”

About the Mirror Awards

The Mirror Awards are the most important awards for recognizing excellence in media industry reporting. Established by the Newhouse School in 2006, the awards honor the reporters, editors and teams of writers who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit. For information about the awards, visit newhouse.syr.edu/mirrorawards or email mirrorawards@syr.edu.  

Newhouse School announces winners in 2022 Mirror Awards competition

At an awards ceremony in New York City tonight, Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications announced the winners in the 2022 Mirror Awards competition for excellence in media industry reporting.

Chosen by a group of journalists and journalism educators, the winners are:

Best Single Article/Story

Janell Ross
“The Key Role a Local Newspaper Played in the Trial Over Ahmaud Arbery’s Murder”
Time

Best Profile
Jaeah Lee
“The Courts Beat”
Columbia Journalism Review

Best Commentary
Alexandria Neason
“On Atonement”
Columbia Journalism Review    

John M. Higgins Award for Best In-Depth/Enterprise Reporting
Robert Mackey
“Meet the riot squad: right-wing reporters who use viral videos to smear BLM”
The Intercept

Best Story on Media Coverage of the Insurrection and the ‘Stop the Steal’ Movement

Jen Wieczner

“Dominion Voting: Big Lies vs. Big Lawsuits”

Fortune

Best Story on Media Coverage of Disinformation/Misinformation Regarding Vaccine and Mask Mandates 
Sheera Frenkel and Tiffany Hsu
“Despite Outbreaks Among Unvaccinated, Fox News Hosts Smear Shots”
“The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online”
“How Local Media Spreads Misinformation From Vaccine Skeptics”
The New York Times

In addition to the juried journalism awards, the Newhouse School presented the Fred Dressler Leadership Award to Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times. Managing editor Joseph Kahn, who will succeed Baquet as executive editor this month, presented the award. The 19^th News was honored with the Lorraine Branham IDEA Award, which was presented by Sunny Hostin, three-time Emmy Award-winning co-host of ABC’s “The View,” and accepted by editor-at-large Errin Haines.

The ceremony was held at French Institute Alliance Française. Newhouse associate dean Joel Kaplan presided over the ceremony, filling in for Dean Mark J. Lodato, who had tested positive for COVID earlier in the week and was unable to attend. Newhouse alumni Contessa Brewer ’96 of CNBC and Ghael Fobes ’22 of NBC News served as co-hosts.

The Mirror Awards are the most important awards for recognizing excellence in media industry reporting. Established by the Newhouse School in 2006, the awards honor the reporters, editors and teams of writers who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit. For information about the awards, visit newhouse.syr.edu/mirrorawards or email mirrorawards@syr.edu. 

The 19th News to be honored with Lorraine Branham IDEA Award at Mirror Awards ceremony June 8

The 19^th News will be honored with the Lorraine Branham IDEA Award from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications June 8. The award, presented as part of the 16th annual Mirror Awards ceremony, will be accepted by editor-at-large Errin Haines. Sunny Hostin, three-time Emmy Award-winning co-host of ABC’s “The View” and New York Times bestselling author, will present the award.

The 19^th News is an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy with the goal of empowering readers—particularly women and LGBTQ+ people from underserved communities—with the information, resources and community they need to be equal participants in democracy. The name is a nod to the 19^th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, but the logo includes an asterisk to symbolize that “suffrage remains a work in progress” in the U.S.

The 19^th News was founded in 2020 by former Texas Tribune staffers Emily Ramshaw, who is CEO, and Amanda Zamora, who is publisher. It’s supported by a mix of membership, philanthropy and corporate underwriting.

The IDEA Award recognizes a media organization that has worked to promote inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility over the course of the previous year. Specifically, the award acknowledges the hiring and development of leadership talent who create change, both to the organizations they oversee and the content they produce. The award was established in honor of late Newhouse dean Lorraine Branham, the first Black woman to serve as dean of the school, who died in 2019.

About the Mirror Awards

The Mirror Awards are the most important awards for honoring excellence in media industry reporting. They were established by the Newhouse School in 2006 to honor the reporters, editors and teams of writers who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit. Finalists in the 2022 competition were announced in April.

The 2022 Mirror Awards ceremony will be held Wednesday, June 8, at French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), New York City. The event will begin with a cocktail reception at 5:30 p.m. followed by the presentation of the awards at 6:45 p.m.

Newhouse dean Mark J. Lodato will preside over the ceremony, and Newhouse alumna Contessa Brewer ’96, a correspondent with CNBC, will serve as master of ceremonies. In addition to the IDEA Award, the Newhouse School will present the Fred Dressler Leadership Award to New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet. Six juried journalism awards—winners of the 2022 competition—will also be presented.

New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet to be honored by the Newhouse School at annual Mirror Awards ceremony

Dean Baquet, who has served as executive editor of The New York Times for eight years, will be honored by the Newhouse School with the Fred Dressler Leadership Award at the annual Mirror Awards ceremony June 8 in New York City. 

“Dean Baquet has exemplified work ethic, skill and commitment to quality,” says Newhouse dean Mark J. Lodato. “His passion for journalism—from his early days as a reporter in New Orleans to his Pulitzer Prize-winning work in Chicago to his capable and successful leadership of The New York Times—has made him an inspiration and a role model for our students, many of whom wish to follow in his footsteps and shape the future of the industry.”

Baquet serves in the highest ranked position in The Times’s newsroom and oversees The New York Times news report in all its various forms. He is the first Black executive editor of The Times, which has won 18 Pulitzer Prizes during his tenure and saw a massive growth in readership. The Times now reaches 100 million readers each month and had 6.7 million subscriptions to its print and digital news products.

Baquet will step down from the position in June, and will be succeeded by managing editor Joseph F. Kahn. The announcement was made yesterday by New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, who said Baquet “will remain at The Times to lead an exciting new venture.”

Kahn will present the Dressler Award to Baquet at the ceremony.

Before being named executive editor, Baquet was managing editor of The Times. He previously served as Washington bureau chief. Baquet rejoined The Times after several years at the Los Angeles Times, where he was editor for two years. 

Previously, Baquet was national editor and deputy metro editor of The New York Times. He joined in 1990 as a metro reporter. 

Before that, he reported for the Chicago Tribune and The Times-Picayune in New Orleans for nearly seven years. While at the Chicago Tribune, Baquet was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for investigative reporting on corruption in the Chicago City Council.

The Dressler Award is given to individuals or organizations that have made distinct, consistent and unique contributions to the public’s understanding of the media. Past recipients have included Jorge Ramos, anchor with Univision Noticias; Sheila Nevins, executive producer and former president of HBO Documentary Films and Family for Home Box Office; and legendary journalist Tom Brokaw of NBC, among others.

About the Mirror Awards

The Mirror Awards are the most important awards for recognizing excellence in media industry reporting. Established by the Newhouse School in 2006, the awards honor the reporters, editors and teams of writers who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit.

In addition to the Dressler Award, the school will also present the Lorraine Branham IDEA Award and six juried journalism awards. Finalists were announced earlier this month.

For more information, visit newhouse.syr.edu/mirrorawards or email mirrorawards@syr.edu.