Tracie Potts wins NLP’s John S. Carroll Award

Tracie Potts, a Washington correspondent with NBC News Channel, is one of two recipients of this year’s John S. Carroll Journalist Fellow Award.

“I am so honored,” she said after being presented with the award at an NLP dinner in June. “To be selected from among well-deserving colleagues by a respected group of journalists and journalism educators makes this beautiful plaque quite valuable to me.”

Named for one of the most revered newspaper editors of his generation, the award is given annually to volunteer journalists who contribute significantly to NLP and its mission. The honorees are selected by a committee of NLP board members and staff.

Paul Saltzman, the Sunday and investigations editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, was presented with his award at an NLP event in Chicago in May.

During her eight years as an NLP journalist fellow, Potts has delivered more than a dozen classroom lessons in schools in Washington, D.C., and Maryland. She also is the host of “Know Your Zone: Sorting Information,” the first lesson in NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom.

In addition, she was featured in a Washington Post report about NLP, was pictured on the cover of NLP’s brochure and has assisted staff members at conferences.

NLP’s president and CEO, Alan C. Miller, described her as a “willing, enthusiastic and gracious stalwart” for news literacy.

Kyle Morean, who used NLP’s curriculum in his media literacy classes at Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter School in Washington, said that whenever Potts was the speaker, he knew his class would run long because the students were “eager to keep asking her questions.”

Potts, said Morean, was “an outstanding guest and engaging presenter.”

Recipients of the award receive $500 and an engraved glass plaque with an etched photo of Carroll, who was the editor of the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader, The Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times. He also was one of NLP’s earliest supporters, served for four years as board chair and was a board member at the time of his death in 2015.