We’re back! Much has changed since PCIM’s last newsletter, and there is a lot to report. Last summer Ithaca College welcomed Mickey Huff as PCIM’s new Distinguished Director and Professor of Journalism in the Roy H. Park School of Communications. Huff is also director of Project Censored and president of the Media Freedom Foundation, a critical media literacy and free press advocacy nonprofit. He comes to New York from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he has been a professor of social science, history, and journalism since 2000. Earlier this year in January, PCIM hired Marcy Sutherland as their new Communication and Research Coordinator. Todd Schack continues as PCIM’s Associate Director and is Associate Professor of Journalism at Ithaca College.
THE 17th ANNUAL IZZY AWARD
The Izzy Award is named after I. F. Stone, the muckraking journalist who launched I.F. Stone’s Weekly in 1953 and challenged McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, racial injustice, and government deceit. The Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College (PCIM) is honored to announce that this year’s Izzy Award will be shared by two journalists and two outlets that undertook path-breaking and in-depth reporting in 2024. On April 30th we will honor this year’s Izzy Award winners at Ithaca College “for outstanding achievement in independent media.”
Steve Mellon (Pittsburgh Union Progress) and Maximillian Alvarez (The Real News Network) collaborated on stories regarding East Palestine, Ohio to expose the toxic environment harming residents long after the 2023 train derailment; Jewish Currents provided in-depth coverage of Gaza and the related injustices, inequalities, and threats to democracy posed abroad and here at home; and the San Francisco Public Press investigated how the U.S. Navy conducted unethical radiation experiments on the public for years without their knowledge.
This year’s judges included the founding director of PCIM and founder of FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) Jeff Cohen, previous PCIM director Raza Rumi, associate director of PCIM Todd Schack, investigative journalism editor Esther Kaplan, media policy professor Victor Pickard, former chair of Ithaca College politics department Patricia Rodriguez, and media studies professor emerita Robin Andersen. The nominations and judging process were overseen by the current PCIM director Mickey Huff and Marcy Sutherland, PCIM’s Communication and Research Coordinator.
The Izzy Awards presentation will be on Wednesday, April 30, at 7 P.M. in Emerson Suites at Ithaca College. The event is free and open to the public and will be streaming and recorded. Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodation, please contact Marcy Sutherland, 607-882-4975 or msutherland1@ithaca.edu, as much as in advance as possible.
For more information, please visit here.
PCIM FROM THE CLASSROOM TO THE COMMUNITY
PCIM sponsored several events in the fall of 2024. In addition to teaching his Independent Media course, Mickey Huff hosted several events. Huff organized “Banned Books Week: Freed Between the Lines” with guests Banned Books Week Coalition Youth Honorary Chair Julia Garnett, Gianmarco Antosca of the National Coalition Against Censorship, and Joyce McIntosh of the American Library Association, as well as Ithaca College Professor Jennifer Spitzer (English) and librarian Catherine Michels. In October, media scholar Nolan Higdon joined Mickey for a public talk, “Disinformation Nation: Critical Media Literacy for Election 2024.” Finally, Mickey arranged a book release panel for Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2025, with his special guests Robin Andersen, Steve Macek, and Shealeigh Voitl at the end of last semester. All events were co-sponsored by PCIM, Project Censored, Project Look Sharp, and the Journalism Department at Ithaca College.
Spring Semester 2025 Mickey Huff offered the course “Fighting Fake News: Press Freedom, Disinformation, and the Post-Truth World.” He worked with two teaching assistants in the Journalism Department registered for the class, Carolina Cedraschi and Elle Wilcox. They chronicled course topics on the IC Journalism Instagram and participated in campus wide interviews and surveys around mis and disinformation in the news.
John Collins, founder of Weave News and Professor Emeritus of Global Studies at St. Lawrence University in NY, visited Todd Schack’s and Mickey Huff’s classes March 4th at Ithaca College for his presentation, “The Deepest Fake News: Exploring the Explanatory Vacuums of Establishment Media Coverage.” Collins explored how US establishment media coverage tends to downplay or even exclude important structural explanations for immediate events, creating explanatory vacuums that make it difficult for the public to diagnose what is happening around them. He addressed the relative absence of the concept of settler colonialism from this coverage and the profound implications of this absence.
Shealeigh Voitl and Andy Lee Roth of Project Censored facilitated a virtual conversation on frame-checking for Park’s journalism students on March 18th as part of Mickey Huff’s class, “Fighting Fake News: Press Freedom and Disinformation in a Post-Truth World.” The presentation promoted students’ digital citizenship and media literacy. Voitl and Roth’s presentations were based on the guide they developed, Beyond Fact-Checking: A Teaching Guide to the Power of News Frames.
PCIM was represented at a screening of The Invisible Doctrine, The Secret History of Neoliberalism at the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival April 4. Todd Schack moderated a post-screening discussion with the filmmaker Lucas Sabean.
Buffalo Street Books hosted a book talk for Mickey’s latest work with Project Censored, State of the Free Press 2025. He was joined by Marcy Sutherland and Teaching Assistants Carolina Cedraschi and Elle Wilcox from the Journalism Department at Ithaca College. They spoke about the need for critical media literacy education in a time of declining public trust in mass media and the moral panic around fake news.
COMING UP!
April 24th, Algorithmic Literacy for Journalists with Andy Lee Roth of Project Censored via Zoom at 12:15 P.M. Roth, recipient of a 2024-25 Reynolds Journalism Institute fellowship for his work on algorithmic literacy, will give a presentation for students at The Ithacan.
On April 30 and May 1, members of the Media Movement Alliance (MMA) will hold their governance board meeting at Ithaca College and attend this year’s Izzy Award ceremony. They will also meet with students and Ithaca College classes to discuss exciting possibilities for working in independent media, including through PCIM’s Internship program.
May 1, MMA members will conduct a ‘masterclass’ in independent media with Professor Schack’s and Huff’s classes (beginning at 11 A.M. in Textor 102), including selected Izzy Award winners. Contact mhuff2@ithaca.edu if other students, faculty, or staff would like to attend.
PCIM’S FEATURED INDEPENDENT MEDIA OUTLETS
In each Indy Brief, PCIM will share independent media outlets or top stories for our readers. For this month and the reintroduction of our newsletter, we share with you this year’s Izzy Award winners’ respective outlets, as well as the newly restored I.F. Stone archive.
Jewish Currents, https://jewishcurrents.org/
San Francisco Public Press, https://www.sfpublicpress.org/
Pittsburgh Union Progress, https://www.unionprogress.com/
The Real News Network, https://therealnews.com/
The Official Website of I.F. “Izzy” Stone https://www.ifstone.org/
NEWS MEDIA LITERACY RESOURCES FROM PROJECT CENSORED
The Media and Me: A Guide to Critical Media Literacy for Young People
The Media and Me provides listeners with the tools and perspectives to be empowered and autonomous media users. The book explores critical inquiry skills to help young people form a multidimensional comprehension of what they read and watch, opportunities to see others like them making change, and insight 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 problems through a critical media literacy lens, this book will help students evolve from passive consumers of media to engaged critics and creators. Mickey Huff will teach a class based on this textbook he co-authored with colleagues at Project Censored as part of the Ithaca Seminars in fall of 2025 for first year students. Accompanying free teaching guide.
Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2025
In their latest book, Project Censored highlights the vital independent news stories that corporate media underreported or missed entirely, exposes rampant junk food news and news abuse, and tracks emerging threats against the press from financial and political powers.
Project Censored in the Classroom
Critical thinking and media literacy are essential skill sets 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 Education programs are used in traditional classrooms, and homeschooling or other educational settings, to help students of all ages develop media literacy skills and enjoy hands-on experience to enhance that education. Our programs informing the public generally leverage the work of these students to provide education to members of the general public who want to engage with our work, whether as a means to develop their own media literacy skills or as a source for trustworthy independent journalism on topics that are not adequately covered by establishment (so-called “mainstream”) news outlets.
The following are great news literacy resources for the classroom:
Beyond Fact-Checking: A Teaching Guide to the Power of News Frames (Voitl, Roth)
A Brief Resource Guide to Fake News (Higdon)
Validated Independent News Story – Exercise (VINS)
ABOUT PCIM
Launched in 2008 from 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.
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.
Marcy Sutherland is the Communications and Research Coordinator for PCIM. Sutherland has been a program manager for various nonprofits, an instructor of education, and a public-school teacher. She is an IC alum, ‘02.
Jeremy Lovelett is Managing Editor of The Edge and Communications and Research Associate at PCIM. Lovelett has most recently served a library role in technical services and works in nonprofit communications. He is an IC alum, ’20.
Events & Speakers
The Center 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.
For more information on the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College (PCIM), visit https://www.parkindymedia.org/ and www.ithaca.edu/indy, or contact pcim@ithaca.edu.