The Journalism Center on Children & Families is a nonprofit program of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park. The center inspires and recognizes exemplary reporting on children and families. Since 1993, over 14,000 journalists have attended its intensive training programs and relied on it for balanced information and resources.
The Journalism Center has received funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, McCormick Foundation, Ms. Foundation for Women, Challenge Fund for Journalism, Freddie Mac Foundation and individual donors.
The Journalism Center offers the training, resources and story ideas needed to cover the challenges today's children and families.
The Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism honor distinguished coverage of disadvantaged children and families. First-place winners in 12 categories receive $1,000 and are honored in an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. Runners-up and honorable mentions are recognized with certificates of merit. Categories include newspapers, magazines, television, radio, online and photojournalism. More than 5,000 journalists have applied for Casey Medals since 1994.
Eligible work must be published or broadcast between January 1 and December 31 of the previous year. Awards are funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
Farai Chideya is an American novelist, multimedia journalist, and radio host. She produced and hosted Pop and Politics with Farai Chideya, a series of radio specials on politics for 15 years. She is the creator and host of the podcast Our Body Politic, which launched in September 2020.
Charles Lewis is an investigative journalist based in Washington D.C. He founded The Center for Public Integrity and several other nonprofit organizations and is currently the executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of Communication in D.C.
The Radio Television Digital News Association, formerly the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA), is a United States-based membership organization of radio, television, and online news directors, producers, executives, reporters, students and educators. Among its functions are the maintenance of journalistic ethics and the preservation of the free speech rights of broadcast journalists.
The Scripps Howard Awards, formerly the National Journalism Awards, are $10,000 awards in American journalism given by the Scripps Howard Foundation. Awardees receive "cash prizes, citations and plaques."
James V. Grimaldi is an American journalist who serves as executive editor of the National Catholic Reporter. He was previously an investigative reporter and senior writer with the Wall Street Journal. He has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize three times, for investigative reporting in 1996 with the staff of the Orange County Register, in 2006 for his work on the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal while working for The Washington Post, and in 2023 with the staff of the Wall Street Journal for its capital assets series.
Leonard "Len" Downie Jr. is an American journalist who was executive editor of The Washington Post from 1991 to 2008. He worked in the Post newsroom for 44 years. His roles at the newspaper included executive editor, managing editor, national editor, London correspondent, assistant managing editor for metropolitan news, deputy metropolitan editor, and investigative and local reporter. Downie became executive editor upon the retirement of Ben Bradlee. During Downie's tenure as executive editor, the Washington Post won 25 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper had won during the term of a single executive editor. Downie currently serves as vice president at large at the Washington Post, as Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, and as a member of several advisory boards associated with journalism and public affairs.
The Scripps Howard Fund is a public charity that supports philanthropic causes important to the E. W. Scripps Company, an American media conglomerate which owns television stations, cable television networks, and other media outlets. The Fund's mission, according to its website, is "creating informed and engaged communities through journalism education, childhood literacy, and local causes." The It is located in Cincinnati, Ohio, home to the Scripps Company.
The Philip Merrill College of Journalism is a journalism school located at the University of Maryland, College Park. The college was founded in 1947 and was named after newspaper editor Philip Merrill in 2001. The school has about 550 undergraduates and 70 graduate students enrolled. The school awards B.A., M.A., M.J. and Ph.D. degrees in journalism. Undergraduates can focus on broadcast or multi-platform journalism.
Tom Rosenstiel is an American author, journalist, press critic, researcher and academic. He is the Eleanor Merrill Visiting Professor on the Future of Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. He was for the previous nine years the executive director of the American Press Institute. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Rosenstiel was founder and for 16 years director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), a research organization that studies the news media and is part of the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. His first novel, Shining City, was published by Ecco of HarperCollins in February 2017 and his second, "The Good Lie," in 2019.
The Online News Association (ONA), founded in 1999, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization located in Washington D.C., United States. It is the world's largest association of digital journalists, with more than 2,000 members. The founding members first convened in December 1999 in Chicago. The group included journalists from WSJ.com, Time.com, MSBN, TheStreet.com, and FT.com, among other outlets.
Cornelia Grumman is an American Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist. She is the director of the Early Education Program at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation in Chicago. From 2008 to 2012, she was the executive director of the First Five Years Fund (FFYF). The First Five Years Fund is an education initiative committed to improving the lives of at-risk children by leveraging cost-effective investments in early learning. A project of the Ounce of Prevention Fund, FFYF is supported by five major family foundations: the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Irving Harris Foundation, the George Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Children's Initiative, a project of the J.B. and M.K. Pritzker Family Foundation.
Bill Lichtenstein is an American print and broadcast journalist and documentary producer, president of the media production company, Lichtenstein Creative Media, Incorporated.
The Knight Center for Specialized Journalism is a national program which that since 1987 has offered seminars for print, broadcast and online reporters, editors and editorial writers. At these seminars, journalists receive in-depth training in subjects related to their coverage—law, health, science, society, demographics, national and international affairs. Applications are sought from reporters and editors working for independent news organizations as well as from independent online and citizen journalists.
Andrea McCarren is a television journalist and educator.
Roland De Wolk is an American author and print and television journalist from the San Francisco Bay Area. His career has spanned four decades. He has won multiple awards for his journalism, including a lifetime achievement award. He has been described as "a star journalist" and "an ace reporter."
Ann Mary Devroy was an American political journalist. She was a White House correspondent for 15 years, for the Gannett Company, USA Today (1979–1985), and The Washington Post (1989–1997). She covered four presidents including Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and 10 White House chiefs of staff.
The Investigative Reporting Workshop (IRW) is an editorially independent newsroom in the American University School of Communication in Washington, D.C. focused on investigative journalism. It pairs students with professional newsrooms to publish projects. It has partnered with dozens of newsrooms on hundreds of investigations, working with over 240 students journalists.
Kevin Merida is an American journalist and author. He formerly served as executive editor at the Los Angeles Times, where he oversaw and coordinated all news gathering operations, including city and national desks, Sports and Features departments, Times Community News and Los Angeles Times en Español.
Amanda Bennett is an American journalist and author, who is the current CEO of U.S. Agency for Global Media. She was the director of Voice of America from 2016 to 2020. She formerly edited The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Lexington Herald-Leader. Bennett is also the author of six nonfiction books.
Gertrude Louise Poe was an American journalist, lawyer, real estate agent, insurance agent, and radio broadcaster who served as the editor of Laurel Leader in Laurel, Maryland from 1939 to 1980. She was known as "Maryland's First Lady of Journalism."