Ithaca College

The Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) at Ithaca College has announced that its second annual Izzy Award for special achievement in independent media will go to investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, whose work in 2009 helped elevate the issue of abuse by military contractors to front-page news. 

Scahill is the author of the international best-seller “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.” He will appear on campus to accept the award on Monday, April 19. Details of the event, which is free and open to the public, will be announced at a later date.

The Izzy Award is named after the legendary dissident journalist I.F. “Izzy” Stone, who launched his muckraking newsletter “I.F. Stone’s Weekly” in 1953 during the height of the McCarthy witch hunts. Stone, who died in 1989, exposed government deceit and corruption while championing civil liberties, racial justice and international diplomacy.

Based in the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College, the Park Center for Independent Media was launched in 2008 as a national center for the study of media outlets that create and distribute content outside traditional corporate systems.  

Judges of the Izzy Award are PCIM director Jeff Cohen; University of Illinois communications professor and author Robert W. McChesney; and Linda Jue, director and executive editor of the San Francisco-based G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism.  

The inaugural Izzy Award was presented last year to blogger Glenn Greenwald and “Democracy Now!” host/executive producer Amy Goodman.