Gwen Ifill

Gwen Ifill honored with Forever stamp

Updates


Gwen Ifill, who was one of most respected journalists of her generation and a longtime friend and supporter of the News Literacy Project, is being honored today by the U.S. Postal Service with a Forever stamp.

“Gwen Ifill was an extraordinary journalist and colleague, a relentless champion of news literacy and a treasured friend,” said Alan Miller, NLP’s founder and CEO, who worked closely with Ifill during her tenure on NLP’s Board of Directors. “She remains an inspiration to us to this day.”

Ifill, who died in 2016, had a distinguished journalism career at the Boston Herald American, The Evening Sun in Baltimore, The Washington Post, The New York Times and NBC before joining PBS in 1999. She was the first woman and first African American to serve as moderator of Washington Week and was a member (with Judy Woodruff) of the first female co-anchor team of a network news broadcast on PBS NewsHour.

NLP involvement

She was involved with NLP from the beginning, taking an active role in five high-profile events, attending many more, and talking up NLP at every opportunity. She joined the board in 2011 and remained a member until her death. As a member of its governance committee, she pushed to seek members who would bring expertise, experience, diversity and a strong commitment to NLP’s mission.

Since 2017, NLP has recognized her significant accomplishments in journalism and her commitment to news literacy with the Gwen Ifill Student of the Year Award, presented annually to a female student of color who represents the values Ifill brought to journalism. A committee of NLP staff and board members selects the honoree.

The dedication of the 43rd stamp in the postal service’s Black Heritage series is being held at Washington’s Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, which Ifill attended for years. The stamp, available in panes of 20, features a photo of Ifill taken by Robert Severi in 2008.

News of the dedication will be available on social media with the hashtags #GwenIfillForever and #BlackHeritageStamps.

More Updates

For Education Week, educators share how they teach students to question health influencers

An opinion piece in EducationWeek by two educators from New York featured the News Literacy Project’s District Fellowship program. The commentary described how the program supported their efforts to teach students to critically evaluate health and wellness claims on social media. “By the end, our teens had developed habits of healthy skepticism when scrolling their…

NLP in the News

In CNN piece, NLP urges care and transparency as journalism embraces AI

Peter Adams, the News Literacy Project’s Senior Vice President of Research and Design, was featured in a CNN article examining the use of artificial intelligence to generate content in newsrooms and the challenges it raises around verification and transparency. “It is precisely because AI is prone to errors that newsrooms must maintain the ‘fundamental standards…

NLP in the News

Insider Spotlight: Genna Sarnak

Welcome to the Insider Spotlight section, where we feature real questions from our team and answers from educators who are making a difference teaching news literacy. This month, our featured educator is Genna Sarnak from Northfield, Massachusetts, where she teaches digital media literacy to middle school students.

Updates