Latest news with #LivingstonAwardforYoungJournalists
Washington Post
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Lizzie Johnson named Ukraine Correspondent
We're happy to announce that Lizzie Johnson will become Ukraine correspondent, adding more powerhouse talent to our first-class team in Kyiv. A standout reporter and writer, Lizzie already knows her way around Ukraine and the momentous stories unfolding there. She has excelled during three long fill-in stints over the past 16 months, reporting on the war, its impact and on its leaders in riveting ways. Her most recent reporting trip produced, among other things, a wrenching portrait of a city in anguish after a Russian missile strike killed nine children on a playground. Lizzie joins International from The Post's narrative accountability team, which combines the rigor of investigative reporting with the power of narrative storytelling. She is a four-time finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, including recognition of her work from Ukraine. She was previously a staff writer at the San Francisco Chronicle, where she covered City Hall before moving to the enterprise and investigative team, earning nods from the California News Publishers Association for Best Writing, Best Profile, Best Enterprise, Best Feature and Best Wildfire Feature. She won the Best of the West contest in longform feature writing in 2021 and was honored by the National Press Club with the President's Award in 2023. Her in-depth coverage of California's wildfire crisis — for which she attended and graduated from a professional firefighting academy — led to her first book, 'Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire." It won the 2022 Gold Medal for nonfiction in the California Book Awards contest and is being developed into a feature film starring America Ferrera and Matthew McConaughey, out this fall. Raised in a farming family in Nebraska, Lizzie is a graduate of the University of Missouri, with bachelor's degrees in journalism and political science. She is also something of an extreme athlete who backpacks, runs marathons and climbs mountains, including some of America's tallest peaks (including, just last week, Mount Hood). That adventuresome spirit will serve Lizzie well in Ukraine, where she joins a team led by bureau chief Siobhán O'Grady, Ukraine-based reporter David L. Stern and a talented and dedicated team of local reporters. Lizzie will start the new job on June 1; she and her husband will move to Kyiv this summer.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Statesman journalists finalists for Livingston Award, Education Writers Association prize
Four Austin American-Statesman journalists are finalists for two prestigious national awards for their reporting last year that examined a rural community's book ban battle and the aftermath of a deadly school bus crash. State politics reporter Bayliss Wagner on Wednesday was named a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, given to journalists who are 35 or younger. She is among 20 journalists across the U.S. honored as a finalist for the prize awarded through the University of Michigan. Wagner is being recognized for her series, "The Cost of a Texas Town's Book Ban Battle," which both chronicled and investigated the far-reaching effects of an ideologically-driven effort to remove more than a dozen books from Llano County public libraries. The work explained how the county and 17 Republican attorneys general hope to overturn a 30-year precedent barring officials from removing books for political reasons, detailed a citizen-led effort to combat the removals and revealed that Washington D.C.-based conservative nonprofit America First Legal collected $80,000 from a fundraiser ostensibly held to offset the county's legal costs. Winners for the prize will be announced in June in New York City. A three-member Statesman reporting team also is one of three finalists in their division for an award from the national Education Writers Association for investigative and public service reporting. The series, "A Fatal Field Trip," by Latino community affairs reporter Emiliano Tahui Gómez, education writer Keri Heath and Tony Plohetski, associate editor for investigations who oversaw and co-authored the project, chronicled the emotional aftermath of the March 2024 deadly bus crash in Bastrop County involving a Hays school district bus. The series also exposed regulatory lapses that contributed to the crash and examined a lack of seatbelts on Texas school buses. Judges called the series 'a powerful investigation that shows how a senseless and deadly bus crash was preventable while also prioritizing the perspectives of the families who lived through it. Beautifully written and deeply reported." Winners will be announced at the group's annual convention in late May in St. Louis. Executive Editor Courtney Sebesta said that the work reflects the ability of Statesman journalists to identify and examine some of the most critical issues in the region. "Our team works daily to go behind the curtain of news events and to provide our readers trustworthy context and analysis," she said. "We are always pleased when those efforts are recognized by both our audience and our journalistic peers." This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: American-Statesman journalists are finalists for two national prizes
