Extra Credit - 2014 Aronson Awards

The 24th annual Aronson Awards Ceremony was Monday, April 28th from 7 to 8:30p.m. at the Roosevelt House. It was a particularly moving and entertaining ceremony for the accomplishments of journalists and cartoonists dedicating their life to advocacy and social justice. Rebecca Carrol,the ceremony's host, said this of social justice journalism. "It runs counter to everything about pop culture." This means that instead of reporting fluff pieces, these journalists pride themselves in giving " a voice to the voiceless" and writing about real people in the world that need media attention in order for their causes or issues to be dealt with. Award winners like Andrea Elliot, Ted Genoways, Chris Hamby, and Angely Mercado wrote pieces about people who don't have a voice in the media. A particularly moving piece was one by Chris Hamby, called "Breathless and Burdened" about how doctors and lawyers were defeating benefit claims for minors who were suffering from black lung. Hamby got emotional when talking about interviewing one of the minors who could barely talk to him for 20 minutes without gasping for breath. At the end of his interviews, the minor's wife broke into tears and told him thank you for reporting on their story. This was just one example of how emotionally attached these journalists are to their stories. Andrea Elliot won for her piece in the New York Times called "Invisible Child", which was about a homeless 11 year old girl. Ted Genoways won for his piece called "End of the Line" about the environment in a poor African American community that is being polluted because of an oil industry. Angely Mercado, a Hunter student, won for writing a piece called "Hunts Point Express" about policies in that area affected by land lords and the gentrification of the South Bronx. All of these pieces give a voice to people who may not have one in the media. Award winner Alexander Mallis did a particularly jarring piece called "After Trayvon", which stood out to me the most. It was a documentary that he made the day after the George Zimmerman ruling where he talked to black men in Flatbush, Brooklyn. He wanted to explore race in America. Another award winner, Terrence McCoy, wrote about an American billionaire role in undermining piece in Palestine and Israel. This piece seemed to take more of a expose type format. McCoy spoke about feeling emotional and angry about the issue, which propelled him to go further in to this story. David Carr won the Aronson Career Achievement Award and gave a inspiring speech about his struggles of being counted out and told the audience to not listen to people that count you out. He joked around by saying, "You'd expect someone dead to walk up here... career achievement.. My only achievement is living." One of my favorite award winners of the night was definitely cartoonist, Clay Bennet, whose cartoons were the very definition of satire, which I am a huge fan of. One of my favorite cartoons of his was "Driving While Barack". He expressed deep gratitude for the journalists that inspire his drawings and spoke of emotion being important to his work. He said, "I'm not concerned with objectivity.. People don't want an objective press; they want a free press." This quote sums up the whole night for me.