JACKSON, Miss.—The Mississippi Free Press received further recognition of its three years of news coverage during the prestigious Izzy Award ceremony on April 27.
The Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) presented the Izzy Award to the Jackson-headquartered statewide news outlet in a virtual ceremony from Ithaca College in New York.
The award lauded “outstanding achievement in independent media” and is named after I. F. “Izzy” Stone, the dissident journalist who launched I. F. Stone’s Weekly in 1953 that questioned government deception, McCarthyism, the Vietnam War and racial bigotry.
Judges of the Izzy Award cited the Mississippi Free Press’ in-depth coverage of the water crisis in Jackson and the racist University of Mississippi donor scandal, as well as the women-run newsroom’s dogged demands for public access to open records and the systemic inequities from COVID-19 that hit Black women harder than any other group, including Black men.
“The Mississippi Free Press is an impressive argument for the importance of local nonprofit news,” the judges recently said. “Its fearless and empathetic reporting exposes racial and economic fault lines that go back centuries, vividly exposing how they shape politics and power in Mississippi in the 21st century.”
Tamiko Smith is responsible for her husband Otis’ home hemodialysis. The Jackson water crisis threatens the treatment that keeps him alive. Photo by Nick Judin
The judges were Raza Rumi, director of PCIM; communications professor, author and media critic Robert W. McChesney; Linda Jue, editor-at-large for the investigative news site 100Reporters and contributing investigative editor for palabra, the innovative news site of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists; and Jeff Cohen, retired journalism professor and founding director of PCIM.
The Free Press provided extensive and leading coverage of the drinking water disaster in Jackson when the capital city’s water mains collapsed in the face of unusual freezing temperatures, despite a $200-million investment in repairs. The series intimately captured the effects on local families and exposed a catastrophic failure of coordination among elected officials.
Additionally, the Free Press was the only news outlet that reported a tranche of emails between donors and University of Mississippi officials, rolling out a startling news-breaking series that pulled back the
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