MLK50: Justice Through Journalism will be honored with the Lorraine Branham IDEA Award at the 2024 Mirror Awards ceremony in New York City on June 13.
The IDEA Award recognizes a media organization that has worked to promote inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility over the previous year. It specifically acknowledges the hiring and development of leadership talent who create change, both to the organizations they oversee and the content they produce. It was established to honor the first Black woman to serve as dean of the Newhouse School at Syracuse University.
“I’m over the moon,” said Wendi C. Thomas, founding editor and publisher of MLK50, who will accept the award. “It’s especially gratifying that this award honors this team and the great work we’re doing in Memphis.”
Seven years ago, Thomas launched the site with $3,000 as a one-year project to reckon with what Memphis and the nation had done with the sacrifice of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Seven years later, MLK50 has grown to a $2 million-plus, 10-person nonprofit organization. Its goal: to make a measurable difference for Memphis residents.
“Through our coverage, this team has helped Memphians understand their city a little better and hold the status quo accountable,” Thomas said. “What we’ve done since 2017 exceeds my wildest dreams.”
Thomas’ career includes stints at the papers in Memphis, Charlotte, Nashville and Indianapolis. She was a 2016 fellow at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism. Her 2019 investigation for MLK50 into a hospital’s aggressive debt collection practices led the hospital to erase nearly $12 million in debt for more than 5,300 defendants. For that she received the 2020 Selden Ring Award and a 2020 Gerald Loeb Award, among other honors.
Thomas also is the 2023 winner of the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence and the 2022 recipient of the Freedom of the Press Local Champion Award from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Ann Marie Lipinski, the curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, will introduce MLK50 and Thomas at the ceremony.
At the same ceremony, Byron Allen, the founder, chairman and CEO of Allen Media Group, will receive the Fred Dressler Leadership Award for his “distinct and consistent contributions to the public’s understanding of media.”
Established by Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in 2006, the Mirror Awards honor reporters, editors and teams of writers who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit.
This story is brought to you by MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit newsroom focused on poverty, power and policy in Memphis. Support independent journalism by making a tax-deductible donation today. MLK50 is also supported by these generous donors.