The 2009 I.F. Stone Medal: an invitation

SHOWCASE | September 267, 2009

This year’s I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence will be presented to documentary filmmaker Jon Alpert on Oct. 1 at American University in Washington, DC.

The Nieman Foundation will present this year’s I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence to reporter, producer and filmmaker Jon Alpert on October 1 at American University in Washington, DC. Alpert is being recognized for his comprehensive body of work. He has made documentaries in Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, the USSR and elsewhere, as well as in the United States, and has won numerous awards for his work.

The presentation will open with a reception at 6 PM at the Katzen Arts Center at American University. Alpert will give a keynote address, followed by a panel discussion in which he and four other distinguished journalists, all of them noted for their independence, will take part.

To be sure of getting seating at the event, people should email Hope Reese of the Nieman Foundation at Hope_Reese@harvard.edu, or phone her at 617-496-0998.

The panel moderator will be John R. MacArthur, an author and president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine. Panelists in addition to Alpert include Barbara Ehrenreich, a journalist, author and activist; Christopher Hedges, author, Pulitzer prize winner and 1998-’99 Nieman Fellow, now a senior fellow at the Nation Institute, and Walter Pincus, a veteran Washington Post reporter who covers intelligence and national security issues.

In connection with the event, the American University School of Communications will announce the winner of an essay contest it has run on the meaning of journalism independence.

This is the second annual I.F. Stone medal; last year’s winner was John Walcott, Washington, DC, bureau chief for the McClatchy news group.

I.F. Stone (1907-1989) was an iconoclastic, independent American journalist best known for a newsletter, I.F. Stone’s Weekly, published from 1953 to 1971. For more on Stone, including much of his writing, see the Web site, http://www.ifstone.org/.

—Barry Sussman

Editor, Nieman Watchdog Project

bsussman@niemanwatchdog.org

Comments

Jump to bottom of list