The Association of Penny-Germans, which is now part of the S&P, our pleasure, great pleasure,
has long awarded an educator who has done the most to promote diversity in journalism.
And it's the award made by Dr. Barry Bingham, a senior who many of you will recall. It was a great favorite in Louisville, at the Courier of Durham.
And our awardee this year, it couldn't be more timely, those who were at the Morgan-Matterman session yesterday, heard him talk about the importance of investigating reporting
and mentioned that there are several efforts such as the recently launched IWL's program to promote diversity among investigative reporters.
So with that in mind, I'm very happy to announce that David Armstrong, who is a Georgia State University professor
who trained student journalists in investigative reporting as director of the Georgian News Lab, is our recipient this year.
I'm going to just read from a nominated letter that was submitted by Ken Foskett, who was the senior editor for Investigations at the Atlanta-German Obstitution.
He wrote, with support from Cox, our parent company, the News Lab was started two years ago in Georgia State to train young journalists from investigative reporting
and improve diversity within the ranks of investigative reporting, which tends to be dominated by white males.
The program draws students from Atlanta's historically black universities, as well as Georgia's large public universities, the University of Georgia,
Tennessee State, and Georgia State. Students of color comprise more than half the class, and this is entirely due to the relationships David Armstrong has built
and recruited into this year. I've often also seen firsthand the time and energy David puts into the training and career development of his students.
Those efforts have paid off both in terms of recognition for the program and job offers and internships for students.
The online news association has awarded the News Lab $100,000 in challenge grant funding, and this year the program won a $50,000 grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.
The program has won smaller grants from the Connect Foundation and the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
Last year, five News Lab students won an S.D.J. award for investigative reporting in the student category, and all four graduating seniors from the program's first year landed jobs with news outlets, CNN, W.A.F.F.T.B.,
the Norfolk Daily Press, and the Washington Post's Talent Network. This summer, students earned summer internships at the A.J.C. and W.S.B. in Atlanta, while one of the two graduate students landed a full-time job at Atlanta's alternative weekly.
So you can see that this is a very extraordinary honor, and I'm happy to present David at Happy Safety Awards.
Can pause if you made it easy. I hope you've heard all of the high notes. Thank you. This is a great honor. Very appreciative of this recognition, not only from our program, but also for other efforts like this that are trying to do this important work and bring more diversity to journalism.
As mentioned, there are several, and they are succeeding. I think that this is the good news where there are things that have been difficult, but I think that they're very sincere efforts to try to work in this direction.
We are deeply appreciative of this honor, this award for shining light on that and trying to bring attention to the fact that there are emerging programs that are doing great work and trying to improve this situation.
Thank you very much to A.O.J. and ASNE. We are deeply honored by this. Thank you.
