Awards & Conferences

Wendi C. Thomas, founding editor and publisher of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit newsroom in Memphis, Tennessee, is winner of the 2023 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. MLK50 focuses on poverty, power and a range of public policy issues that affect local residents. Since its founding in 2017, it has told the stories of marginalized people too often ignored by established news media.

Speaking about this year’s decision, I.F. Stone Medal jury member Jasmine Brown said: “Wendi Thomas followed her North Star, establishing MLK50 despite doubters who told her a nonprofit newsroom centered on the vulnerable could not stand. MLK50 has proven there is strength in a press that is proximate to the people. MLK50’s reporting has transformed lives and brought about change. As a shining beacon of local journalism, this newsroom gives me hope that there are scalable models for the press to survive and thrive.”

Read the announcement.

Established in 2008, the I.F. Stone Medal recognizes journalistic independence and honors the life of investigative journalist I.F. Stone.

The award is presented annually to an American journalist or news executive whose work exemplifies the independent spirit, integrity, courage and indefatigability that characterized I.F. Stone’s Weekly published from 1953 to 1971.

A committee of journalists oversees nominations and the selection of an annual medal winner. The committee is chaired by PBS public editor Ricardo Sandoval-Palos. Other members are Jasmine Brown, a senior producer in the race and culture unit at ABC News’ “World News Tonight with David Muir”; Myra MacPherson, author of “All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone”; Phillip W.d. Martin, a senior investigative reporter for WGBH News; Michael Riley, an investigative reporter for Bloomberg News and Businessweek magazine; and Bernice Yeung, a ProPublica reporter who focuses on labor and employment.

Journalist I.F. Stone’s passion for speaking his mind incurred the wrath of the powerful. His opposition to Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his determination to expose the excesses of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI led to attacks on his credibility and reputation during the McCarthy Era in the early 1950s.

The I.F. Stone Medal bears a likeness of an issue of I.F. Stone’s Weekly with a headline on the Tonkin Gulf affair, ‘All We Really Know Is That We Fired The First Shots.’ (PDF)

Stone was one of only a few journalists who reported on the U.S. government’s false allegations that the North Vietnamese had attacked a U.S. destroyer in 1964, the claim President Johnson used to persuade the Senate to approve the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which ultimately paved the way for the country to enter the Vietnam War.

The Genesis of the I.F. Stone Medal