ATLANTA- The Georgia News Lab has been named the winner of the Association of Opinion Journalists’ Barry Bingham Sr. Award. The award recognizes outstanding efforts to encourage minority students in journalism.
David Armstrong, professor and Director of News Lab, said that what the lab is doing is “not just a good thing, but the right thing. We are training people who need to break through perspectives.”
Diversity has always been a goal for the lab. From the start, the News Lab has set out to help train the next generation of investigative reporters and increase diversity in the newsroom. Combining the diverse student population at Georgia State with the partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities including Morehouse and Clark Atlanta makes recruiting a diverse group of students easy.
The students are recruited early and trained both in and out of classrooms. They gain experience from the reporting opportunities available with media outlets in metro Atlanta. This training makes the most difficult work in the industry accessible.
The News Lab was founded at Georgia State University in fall 2014. The program is a partnership between several schools including Kennesaw, Mercer, Emory, University of Georgia, and Morehouse. At the moment, the organization has 12 students enrolled including, for the first time this year, two graduate students.
This award will help fund future student projects.
The award will be presented Sept. 13 at the American Society of News Editors annual convention in Philadelphia.
The News Lab has won other awards including $65,000 Challenge Fund Grand Prize for Innovation in Journalism Education awarded by the Online News Association and the Larry Peterson Memorial Award for Investigative Journalism.