PCIM NEWS

The First Expanded Izzy Fest! 

We have had a very productive and busy Spring semester, which included welcoming some of the best and brightest from the world of independent journalism for Izzy Fest 2026!

April 21–22, PCIM partnered with Project Censored, the Movement Media Alliance, and the Society of Professional Journalists Region 1 for the Press Freedom Forum conference at Ithaca College in the Emerson Suites. This two-day series of events culminated in the 18th Annual Izzy Award ceremony.

Stay tuned for a video of the events done by Park Productions! Those will be posted on the ParkIndyMedia.org site later in early June. Also, see more about this year’s Izzy winners under the Featured Independent Media section of this newsletter just below!

Recap of Izzy Fest 2026

April 21’s Press Freedom Forum Highlights:

• Media scholars, authors, and educators Allison Butler, Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff discussed the importance of critical media literacy in an era of mis and disinformation. They included the news literacy education work of Project Censored and addressed related issues around digital and AI literacy and what that means for the future of public interest journalism. 
• Maximilian Alvarez, 2025 Izzy Award Winner and editor-in-chief at The Real News Network spoke about press freedoms for the lunch plenary at noon in a talk titled “The War on our Sight.”  
• Chris Farone, editorial director at the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and Jason Pramas, editorial director of BINJ and co-founder of Alliance of Nonprofit News Outlets, presented on vanguard reporting in an age of influencers cosplaying as journalists. 
• Maya Schenwar of Truthout and Lara Witt of Prism, both co-founders of the Media Movement Alliance, discussed Movement Journalism as anti-fascist resistance. The panel was moderated by Norman Stockwell, publisher of The Progressive.   

April 22’s SPJ Region 1 Conference Highlights: 

• Students networked with representatives of the conference’s co-sponsoring organizations 
• SPJ recognized some of the best student journalists and campus newspapers from Region 1 at the Mark of Excellence Awards luncheon 
• PCIM founding director Jeff Cohen gave the historic Izzy Legacy Tour at the Park School 
• PCIM held the 18th Annual Izzy Award ceremony in Emerson Suites

More on Izzy Fest

First Cohort of Student Judges
During this judging season of the Izzy’s, PCIM invited a group of highly motivated and interested students to take part in the judging process for this year’s award. The student cohort, which included Vivian Rose, Elle Wilcox, Jackie Vickery, Prakriti Panwar and Ryan Johnson, parsed through dozens of nominations to help PCIM’s distinguished director, Mickey Huff, and PCIM Communications and Research Coordinator, Marcy Sutherland, narrow the list down for the rest of the judges. Two members of the judging cohort, Elle and Vivian, were also invited to join this year’s judges for deliberation, which included Esther Kaplan, Raza Rumi, Patricia Rodriguez, Robin Andersen, Eleanor Goldfield and Victor Pickard.

The 18th Annual Izzy Award and Izzy Fest Featured at the Park School
As you walked through the Roy H. Park School on April 20th, students witnessed a purple-out! The second-floor lobby was decked out in PCIM’s signature color to kick off our first-ever Izzy Fest! This two-day press freedom forum honored the life and times of the late I.F. (Izzy) Stone and his major contributions to independent media. Our Izzy challenge invited students, faculty, and staff to learn who Izzy was and discover independent media’s interdisciplinary relevance to the wide variety of majors offered at the Park School. Thanks to Mickie Quinn of Park Promotions and Elle Wilcox for their enthusiastic efforts! PCIM also tabled on April 20 from 10am until 2pm in Textor Hallway during Ithaca College’s Sustainability Week, hosted by the Office of Energy Management! The center was featured for its dedication to sustainability for Earth Day—when the 18th Annual Izzy Award ceremony was held!

FEATURED INDEPENDENT MEDIA OUTLETS
AND MEDIA LITERACY RESOURCES

Each newsletter, PCIM shares independent media outlets and critical media literacy resources with our readers to broaden our media habits and diversify our information diets. This time, we call attention to the winners and honorable mentions of the 18th Annual Izzy Award: 

Winners of This Year’s Annual Izzy Award

The Texas Observer is Texas’ leading independent print news outlet since 1954 and after nearly shutting down in 2023, the Observer has only grown stronger. Its workers saved the paper through crowdfunding and managed to see the paper’s 70th anniversary. Now, the Observer uses its platform to publish first-person writing by those directly harmed by state policies and employs cutting-edge, open-source investigative techniques to identify political extremists. Editor-in-chief Gus Bova and executive director Loren Lynch accepted the award.

Gwynne Hogan, senior reporter, and Haidee Chu, data journalist, from The City published the first reports about ICE’s use of 26 Federal Plaza in New York City as a detention center back in May 2025. Hogan and Chu used leaked videos and data analysis from the makeshift detention center that proved that migrants were being held for several days at 26 Federal Plaza. Migrants were being held without food, lawyers, or access to bathrooms. Although DHS denied they were holding migrants, Hogan and Chu’s reporting showed hundreds of people were held for more than two days. Gywnne Hogan accepted the award.

Abby Martin, documentary filmmaker at the Empire Files, won for her film Earth’s Greatest Enemy, which exposes the world’s largest polluter: the U.S. military. The film tells the urgent story about our current climate crisis through her tireless investigative journalism and showcases movements of resistance around the globe of those fighting back. Abby sent a prerecorded video message as she could not attend in person.

 

The Judges’ Honorable Mentions This Year 

Drop Site News, founded by Ryan Grim and Jeremy Scahill in 2024, is an investigative news organization that dedicates itself to exposing crimes of the powerful. Drop Site is fully funded by subscribers and focuses its reporting on secret conflicts where the U.S. government have played a key role, global politics and war.

Founded by ex-Vice Motherboard reporters, 404 Media centers its reporting on tech news, immigration and surveillance capitalism. 404 has broken several stories like these, including the silent costs of ecological damage and the human toll behind AI. They have also investigated the underworld of online sex-trafficking, the war on science and much more.

PRISM has set out to reveal pro-Israel biases in newsrooms across the world and understand how it works practically. During its one-year investigation into pro-Israel newsrooms, it has featured interviews with journalists and experts who are doing the same work—to show biases in news coverage, uncover which editors and news leaders control the narrative and how lobby groups have pressured newsrooms into a culture of fear for publishing critical news about Israel or the genocide in Gaza.

FINGER LAKES ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL

This spring, PCIM was excited to continue sponsoring the screening of several documentaries for the 29th Annual Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF)! We’ll screened documentary films from award-winning journalists Amy Goodman, Abby Martin and Charlie Spickler at Cinemapolis!

On April 2 at 7pm, Amy Goodman’s highly decorated film, Steal This Story, Please! was screened at Cinemapolis. The film comes just after Amy’s 30 years as host of independent broadcast news outlet, Democracy Now!  The film serves as a portrait of Goodman’s trailblazing work in independent journalism and has gone on to be featured at dozens of prestigious film festivals across the globe. The film was released in select theaters on April 10. Watch the trailer here.

On April 4 at 6pm, we screened Abby Martin’s revolutionary doc, Earth’s Greatest Enemy at Cinemapolis. Abby is currently completing the international tour of her film, which follows her five-year endeavor to expose the world’s largest polluter: the U.S. military. After the screenings of Amy Goodman and Abby Martin’s films, PCIM’s own distinguished director, Mickey Huff, led a Q&A with the filmmakers and the audience.

Charlie Spickler’s documentary Rising Tides was also screened at Cinemapolis on March 29. Charlie is an independent filmmaker based in Brooklyn and is the founder of Reel Brooklyn Films. Charlie’s films focus on systematic failures in the US and have been aired nationally on PBS. His award-winning film, Rising Tides, reveals that climate change has become a major threat to the fishing industry as crab and scallop populations decline off the Atlantic seaboard. Andrew Utterson, professor of Media Arts, Sciences and Studies, at Ithaca College hosted Spickler at Cinemapolis at 6pm and held a Q&A with Charlie and the audience after the screening.

PCIM FROM THE CLASSROOM
TO THE COMMUNITY

Students Take on the “Fighting Fake News” Class with Professor Huff 

“Nobody can tell you what’s fake news. Nobody can tell you what’s misinformation. But rather, you have to decide it for yourself, and you have to actually spend the time to analyze it.” ~ Flynn Hynes, Senior Sports Media Major 

“[This class] made me more interested in journalism, not enough to like all [journalists], but enough to like working with them, which I feel like most governments often refuse to do, and they just pay them, or just corrupt [the media landscape] as much as possible. But I feel like this class really helped me understand why it really matters.” ~ Daivat Mehta, first-year 

“Personally, I would like to be a war correspondent [and work] more for international journalism. And I immediately think that being able to now recognize patterns of propagated fallacies, misinformation and disinformation especially for an international decorum and complex situations like conflict zones in war, will really help me be more transparent with my findings.” ~ Dylan Albert, Senior Journalism and Politics Major 

“I’m a piano performance major, and I walked into the class thinking, ‘I don’t really need to care so much about news and media literacy.’ And I think being in this class has completely changed my mind on that. Being an Arts major, it’s even more important for me to be media literate and understand what information I’m putting out there and what I’m talking about with other people.” ~ Laura Zhou-Hackett, Junior Piano Performance Major 

“I’m planning on going into photojournalism when I graduate, and especially with visual journalism. The majority of opportunities come from more corporate outlets, or just bigger outlets that have more resources. I think this class is something that’s really helpful, especially because in my career, I’m likely to be working with some of these corporate outlets, and it’s really essential to know about their issues and potential biases going into it, to see about what I can do to address or minimize those or hopefully change the culture.” ~ Caleb Kaufman, Senior Film, Photography Major 

“I want to go into fashion journalism, and I think an eye opener [from this class] is that I don’t have to go into corporate media organizations to accomplish what I want to accomplish, I can make my own and do my own thing. Or even if I do decide to work in a corporate media field, I can figure out ways to open up that sphere for thought and understanding and have that ability to think for yourself and not just follow the conveyor belt.” ~ Lyndzee Walker, Senior Journalism Major 

 

PCIM, Student Work, and the 2026 Whalen Symposium 

Jackie Vickery, student researcher at PCIM, and Vivian Rose, the center’s media associate, are extremely excited for the chance to feature the work they’ve contributed to PCIM at Ithaca College’s annual Whalen Symposium on April 7.

Jackie presented work that focused on critical media literacy, public health journalism, and inclusive reporting practices. On February 27, she presented at the Reporting on Addiction Workshop, which PCIM sponsored along with the organization Reporting on Addiction and The Ithacan at Ithaca College. Her presentation covered how journalists can cover substance use disorders accurately and responsibly, framing individual stories within a broader public health context.

Jackie also wrote an article, “Two Campuses, Two Approaches: How Higher-Ed is Responding to AI,” that is now available to read on PCIM’s website! Her article examined how Ithaca College and Cornell University were approaching AI in the classroom, while also exploring how generative AI and educational platforms function as data extraction infrastructures that threaten academic freedom and student privacy.

Vivian’s presentation included work that has focused on managing the 18th Annual Izzy Award and her leadership of PCIM’s first-ever cohort of student judges. The Izzy award honors journalists who have exemplified outstanding achievement in independent media. This past year, PCIM received more than 100 nominations, of which were reviewed and judged with the help of the student cohort. She also be presented her article, “Public versus Private: A Nation Divided on Free Speech,” which you can also read on the PCIM site! Her piece delves into the freedom of speech afforded to most Americans through the First Amendment. Vivian’s article analyzes whether public college and university professors receive the same freedoms of speech as other Americans, or if their speech could be targeted if they are seen as public citizens.

NEWS MEDIA LITERACY RESOURCES FROM
PROJECT CENSORED

The Media and Me: A Guide to Critical Media Literacy for Young People 
The Media and Me textbook provides students with tools and perspectives to empower them as autonomous media users. The book explores critical thinking skills to help young people form a multidimensional comprehension of what they read and watch in media, opportunities to see others like them engaging and making change, and insights into their own identity projects. By covering topics like storytelling, building arguments and recognizing fallacies, surveillance and digital gatekeeping, advertising and consumerism, and global social/political challenges through a critical media literacy lens, this book will help students evolve from passive consumers of media to engaged critics and creators. Mickey Huff taught a class based on the text he co-authored with colleagues at Project Censored as part of the Ithaca Seminars this fall for first year students.

Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2026
In their latest book, Project Censored celebrates 50 years of news literacy and reporting on the news that didn’t make the news. Highlights include among the most vital independent news stories that corporate media underreported or missed entirely last year, exposes rampant Junk Food News  and News Abuse propaganda by establishment media outlets, and tracks rising threats against the press from financial and political powers. The Project’s 50th Anniversary book was coedited by Shealeigh Voitl, Mickey Huff, and Andy Lee Roth and published by The Censored Press November 11th, 2025. Mickey will discuss this book at the Ithaca is Books Festival this coming September 10-13.

Project Censored in the Classroom
Critical thinking and media literacy are essential skillsets for students in the 21st century. Teachers who bring Project Censored into their classrooms give their students direct, hands-on opportunities to develop their critical thinking skills and media literacy. The Project’s academic educational programs are used in traditional classrooms and homeschooling or other educational settings to help students of all ages develop critical media literacy skills and enjoy hands-on experience to enhance that education. The Project’s programs give members of the public a means to develop their own media literacy skills while providing sources of trustworthy independent journalism on topics that are not adequately covered by establishment (so-called “mainstream”) news outlets.

Validated Independent News Story – Exercise (VINS)
This assignment highlights the importance of independent media as a vehicle for enhancing news media literacy when comparing/contrasting the coverage published by independent outlets vs. the corporate/establishment media around major issues of the day. It can be done across the curriculum! Contact mhuff2@ithaca.edu to get involved to create opportunities to get your students published!

The Project Censored Show
Hosted by Mickey Huff and Eleanor Goldfield, this syndicated public affairs program (founded in 2010) covers the news that didn’t make the news and analyzes why through a critical media literacy lens. The program airs on the Pacifica network and is carried on more than 60 stations from the San Francisco Bay Area to New York City, and from the nation’s capital to right here in Ithaca at WRFI.

The following are excellent additional news literacy resources for the classroom (free!): 

• Beyond Fact-Checking: A Teaching Guide to the Power of News Frames (Voitl, Roth) 
• A Brief Resource Guide to Fake News (Higdon) 
• Project Look Sharp has an amazing array of media literacy lessons and materials available for free at their website. Please check out the work of our wonderful friends and allies housed at Ithaca College! 

 

ABOUT PCIM

Launched in 2008 with a generous endowment from the Park Foundation along with the first director Jeff Cohen, also the founder of FAIR.org, the Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) is a national center for the study of independent media– focusing on news outlets that create and distribute content outside of corporate systems. This includes employing a critical media literacy analysis of the overall news media ecosystem that looks at the unique role of independent media outlets within it. Throughout history, technological and social upheavals have given rise to independent media to amplify marginalized voices, often around some of the most contested issues. Today, independent media are growing amid crisis and conglomeration in so-called mainstream journalism alongside online sources and new forms of media production and distribution.

The center’s mission is to engage students and media producers across the county in conversation about career paths in independent media, and financially viable ways to disseminate accurate news and information in the public interest that is often not covered in the establishment press. The center examines the impact of independent media and media (il)literacies on journalism, democracy, and political culture.

The PCIM Team

Mickey Huff is the Distinguished Director of PCIM and Professor of Journalism at the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College. Huff continues to serve as the third director of Project Censored and as president of the nonprofit Media Freedom Foundation. He has been a professor of social science, history, and journalism at Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2000, where he was chair of the history and journalism departments, and helped co-found the social justice studies program. Huff follows founding PCIM Director Jeff Cohen and Director Raza Rumi. Learn more here.

Marcy Sutherland (IC alum ‘02) is the Communications and Research Coordinator for PCIM. Marcy is an educator, program strategist, and equity-centered leader with experience spanning K–12 education, higher education, nonprofit leadership, and community development. From classroom teaching and instructional coaching to managing national programs and community partnerships, her work is grounded in collaboration, relationship-building, and social impact. Marcy is passionate about mentorship, educational equity, and helping organizations align mission-driven programming with meaningful community engagement. Learn more here.

Todd Schack is the Associate Director of PCIM and Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Ithaca College. Dr. Schack’s research focuses on the wars on drugs and terror, and journalistic genres such as immersion, music, food, travel, and graphic nonfiction.

Vivian Rose was the spring Media Associate for PCIM and an editorial intern at Ms. magazine. Vivian is a Dec. 2025 graduate from Ithaca College and received a B.A. in Journalism with a concentration in environmental studies.

Elle Wilcox was the Social Media Manager for PCIM. She was a senior at Ithaca College working toward a B.S. in Finance and a B.A. in Journalism with a Business Analytics minor. She graduated in May 2026.

Jackie Vickery was a student researcher for PCIM and a senior at Ithaca College pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism with minors in Photography and Religious Studies. She graduated in May 2026.

Special thanks to those who have worked with PCIM in the past, including former directors Jeff Cohen and Raza Rumi, as well as Maura Stephens, Brandy Hawley, Hannah Brooks, and Jeremy Lovelett. 

 

Events & Speakers

PCIM regularly invites leading voices in independent media to engage on topics of their expertise. PCIM also collaborates with Project Censored and Project Look Sharp throughout the year.