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MFP Contributor
Deputy Editor Azia Wiggins and Publisher and Chief Revenue Officer Kimberly Griffin are helping lead a new, three-pronged approach to journalism in Mississippi and the United States: systemic reporting. Now, they’re both nominated for national nonprofit-news awards.
“Kimberly and I have assembled a team at the Mississippi Free Press who aren’t easily fooled, who believe in difficult proactive reporting, and who report causes and then solutions,” Donna Ladd writes. “Our team is not lured by the two-way horserace model that lets so much vital reporting slip through the cracks and helps ingrain the kinds of public and media ignorance that led us to this moment. We don’t bow to politicians or parties of any stripe, and we work to anticipate the story, not scramble to catch up later.
As someone told me last week in Los Angeles: ‘The MFP model must spread.'”
It took several days for the media to start centering and leading with House Speaker Philip Gunn’s position that a 12-year-old victim of incest must give birth to her relative’s child if impregnated. Ashton Pittman’s follow-up report centering the news went viral.
The Mississippi Free Press was the big winner at the 2022 Society for Professional Journalists’ Diamond Awards in Little Rock, Ark, on June 30, 2022. Sixteen members of the MFP team took 15 honors total, eight of them first-place awards for journalism published in 2021.
The Mississippi Free Press had a stellar showing in the Society for Professional Journalists’ Diamonds contest for our 2020 work during our first year publishing, with 15 awards, 11 of them first place.
Attorney Rob McDuff of the Mississippi Center for Justice is now representing the Mississippi Free Press and Nick Judin in an ethics complaint against the House Speaker Philip Gunn and the Republican House Caucus for refusing to allow Judin and other members of the public to attend its meetings. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann believes Republican Senate Caucus gatherings fall under the Mississippi Open Meetings Act.
“Power is power, and it always deserves more sunshine, not less. All Mississippi Free Press journalists believe in that principle and, like Nick Judin in recent weeks, will try to bring you the information others would rather you not have. This is exactly what “truth to power” means, and we’re dedicated to it.”
“This newsroom all of you helped build is, quite literally, a dream team,” Donna Ladd writes. “Now we’re ready to add another leader to it who wants what we have to offer and to grow with the MFP as all of these amazing human beings—all leaders, to a person—have done.”
Editor Donna Ladd writes that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is showing fearless leadership in the collaborative fight to preserve democracy, just as we have to work together and a fierce devotion to protecting one’s home from fascist control person by person and against great odds. Mississippians need to emulate this spirit to guarantee freedom for all on a local level, she writes.
Mississippi Journalism and Education Group is a a 501(c)(3) nonprofit media organization (EIN 85-1403937) for the state, devoted to going beyond partisanship and publishing solutions journalism for the Magnolia State and all of its people.
125 S. Congress Street #1324
Jackson, MS 39201
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601-362-6121
The Mississippi Free Press is a project of the Mississippi Journalism and Education Group, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit journalism organization (EIN 85-1403937).