Dear FM-L & HCJ-L people, Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now" will be on campus at 5 p.m., Tuesday, April 17 to receive a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, honoring her distinguished career. Also in attendance will be four other prizewinners, who have done powerful work on environmental threats to the world's oceans, the real identities of Guantánamo detainees, uranium mining polluting Navajo homelands and the plight of AIDS orphans in Haiti. Whether your interest is journalistic technique, the social issues these journalists engage, or their career advice, the evening should offer a great deal to think about. Digital artists should find the work of John Sherffius, this year's "Cartoonist with a Conscience," engaging. The project on AIDS orphans made extensive use of compelling photographs, and the photographers will be at the event. The winners will talk for a while, then be available for Q&A and one-to-one conversation. With the profound changes occurring in both global ecology and the media industry, the discussion should be even more pointed than usual. You'll find a full press release below. Everyone is welcome; feel free to bring friends. Refreshments will be served. So come! It's going to be good! Peter Parisi ========================= The James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism Department of Film & Media Studies Hunter College 695 Park Avenue New York, NY 10021 2006 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism goes to broadcaster-columnist Amy Goodman for her distinguished career investigating injustice Aronson news awards honor stories on · Humanity's destructive impact on the world's oceans · Guantánamo detainees · Uranium pollution of Navajo homelands and · AIDS orphans in Haiti John Sherffius of the Boulder Daily Camera takes "Cartooning with a Conscience" prize NEW YORK -- Amy Goodman's distinguished career utilizing multiple media platforms to bring a clear social justice vision to reporting and investigating the news is a winner of a special 2006 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. For social justice news reporting in 2006, Aronson prizes honor the work of Mother Jones magazine for spotlighting humanity's destructive impact on the world's oceans; the National Journal for taking the lead in revealing the surprisingly innocent backgrounds of many Guantánamo detainees; the Los Angeles Times for exposing the US government's uranium mining on Navajo land and subsequent abandonment of the Navajo people when radiation began to kill them; and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel for portraying the grave plight and remarkable resiliency of AIDS orphans in Haiti. The Aronson "Cartooning with a Conscience" award goes to the powerful, artfully crafted images of John Sherffius of the Boulder Daily Camera. The prize winners will be honored at a ceremony open to the public beginning at 5 p.m., Tuesday, April 17 in the Faculty Dining Room , Eighth Floor, Hunter College West Building, 68th Street and Lexington Avenue. Tom Robbins of the Village Voice will deliver a keynote introduction. Robbins holds Hunter College's Jack Newfield Visiting Professorship In Journalism for Spring 2007. A Multimedia Investigator and Interviewer Amy Goodman, Career Achievement Award For decades, Amy Goodman has provided invaluable journalism, actively measuring world events against clear-eyed standards of social justice. Her interviews give voice to the silenced; her in-depth investigations probe injustices played down in mainstream media. Now, the reporting that has spanned multiple media formats -- public, college and community radio, podcasting, Internet access and television -- has moved into print as a column syndicated by King Features. Democracy Now's reach widens just as its importance has never been greater as an essential counterbalance to increasingly consolidated media. As she put it in her first column, the public needs media to provide viewpoints beyond those of the pundits who quibble over how quickly the bombs should fall and fail to ask whether they should be falling at all. Ocean's End? Julia Whitty, "The Fate of the Ocean" Scientific consensus on the reality of global warming may finally have been acknowledged, but only scattered attention has been paid to the equally grave dangers facing the seven-tenths of the planet covered by the world's oceans. In the lead article of a 28-page cover package on the topic in Mother Jones magazine, Julia Whitty chronicles the devastation unfolding in the oceans, where nearly every form of life -- from plankton to Whales -- is threatened by human activity. Whitty interweaves compelling personal accounts of her travels aboard research vessels in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico with exhaustive research into a daunting, compelling narrative of overfishing, global dead zones, changing ocean currents, noise pollution, the ozone hole, floating plastics, and under-water global climate change. Who Are the Detainees? Corine Hegland, "Guantanamo's Grip" Intrigued by the rising number of hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay, National Journal Staff Correspondent Corine Hegland set about to discover who exactly the Guantánamo detainees were -- guileful terrorists? desperate innocent men? The resulting investigation scrutinized 6000 pages of court documents to create a thorough database on 132 of the detainees and partial information on 314 others. Her findings: according to the government's own records, most of the men weren't known terrorists, weren't captured on the battlefield, and weren't even accused of fighting the United States Mined and Undermined Judy Pasternak, "Blighted Homeland" Navajos living in homes built with radioactive uranium mine waste, drinking contaminated water and inhaling radioactive dust -- Los Angeles Times reporter Judy Pasternak's four-part series brings into shocking clarity the plight of these Native American victims of the Cold War, whose lands were mined to build the US nuclear arsenal then largely left ravaged and lethally radioactive. Native Americans are generally a vastly underreported group. Against that background, Pasternak's exhaustive interviewing, and patient investigation of real estate and mine-inspection records are all the more laudable. She shows how lack of political clout left the Navajos to fend for themselves in cleaning up a toxic mess. Now, with uranium prices rising, mining companies are again eyeing the rich deposits on Navajo land and the Navajo themselves are torn between the hope for new jobs and the risk of a polluted homeland. Yes, In My Backyard Reporter Tim Collie, photographers Mike Stocker and Jim Amon, "Orphans of AIDS" The South Florida Sun-Sentinel does not sell many papers in the Caribbean, but its journalism fully recognizes the web of connections between their circulation area and that troubled region not so far away after all. The four-part series culminates a five-year effort examining the AIDS crisis in South Florida and the Caribbean. The picture is grim, with Haiti lacking a single dollar of public funds for AIDS programs and the efforts of charity groups being often heroic but limited, while the number of victims continues to grow. Reporter Tim Collie's eloquent yet straightforward treatment brings the lives of these homeless children before us in their own words with their honesty and resiliency further documented by a visit display of extensive photographs by Mike Stocker and Jim Amon. The stories' humane focus does not exclude the complex context of this tragedy. Information graphics clearly lay out the complexities of AIDS funding, the difficulties of treating the disease in children and pregnant mothers, and its wide prevalence in South Florida and the Caribbean. Painterly with a Punch John Sherffius, the Boulder Daily Camera, "Cartooning with a Conscience" John Sherffius' cartooning is remarkable for the painterly quality of his images combined with a mordant, dry irony that make the effect of his work more often a kind of shocked gasp than a chuckle. To portray the shift of US military intentions from Iraq to Iran, he depicts an odometer showing the letters I, R and A with a fourth space where the letter Q rolls up as the letter N slides into view. The display is spattered with blood. The awards were announced March 8 at Hunter College of the City University of New York, where they have been administered since 1990 by the Department of Film & Media Studies and a committee of journalists, media professionals, scholars and activists. CONTACT: Peter Parisi | [log in to unmask] | (212) 772-5041 Website: http://filmmedia.hunter.cuny.edu/aronson Peter Parisi, Ph.D. Dept. of Film & Media Studies Hunter College 695 Park Avenue New York, NY 10021 212-772-4949 Suffering itself isn't so bad; it's resenting the suffering that really hurts. --Allen Ginsberg