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News
Release January 12, 2006
NLGJA
News > News Releases > January 12, 2006
National
Lesbian & Gay
Journalists Association Receives
$100,000 Gift from CNN for Journalist Scholarships
WASHINGTON,
DC – The National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association
(NLGJA) is pleased to announce that CNN will make a $100,000 donation
to the NLGJA Scholarship Fund endowment to support the Leroy F.
Aarons Scholarship Award. The academic award is named in the memory
of NLGJA’s founder, the late Leroy F. Aarons, Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist and editor.
Pamela
Strother, NLGJA Executive Director, said “This
unprecedented gift from CNN is a
milestone for NLGJA as the largest single gift
from a news media company to the organization.
CNN has ensured that the Aarons Award
will be fully funded and has provided a
solid base to our endowment to allow
us to grow our awards program to
help even more deserving journalism students. ”
“CNN is only as strong as its journalists and this donation
helps ensure that we not only support an outstanding organization
of journalists but a deep resource for hiring future CNN anchors,
correspondents and producers,” said Jim Walton, President,
CNN Worldwide.
The
$5,000 Aarons scholarship will be awarded annually to an LGBT
undergraduate or graduate student who plans
a career in journalism
and is committed to furthering NLGJA’s mission of fair and
accurate coverage of the LGBT community.
Eric
Hegedus, President of NLGJA, said, “We are deeply
grateful to CNN for sustaining Roy’s commitment to the profession
he loved. His aims for NLGJA have always
insisted on the highest possible journalism
standards, and with this endowment, his work
lives on through the next generations
of promising young students.”
Leroy
F. Aarons dedicated his life to journalism until his death at
age 70 in 2004. He believed that the lesbian,
gay, bisexual,
and transgender community could advance
if the news media did its job by
simply telling the truth. Aarons knew that coverage
of the LGBT community, as well as that
of other minorities, requires increasing
sophistication and training for journalists. He realized
early that improving coverage had to
start in the training camps for young
journalists – the journalism schools at the nation’s
colleges and universities.
In
2005, NLGJA’s 15th anniversary year, the Leroy F. Aarons
Scholarship Award was established to honor Aarons’ memory
and to continue the work he began when
he founded NLGJA.
NLGJA partnered with The Philadelphia Foundation (TPF), a community
foundation established in 1918, to administer the NLGJA Scholarship
Fund. The Delaware Valley Legacy Fund, a component fund of TPF
serving to advance philanthropy within the lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender communities, will disburse the scholarship awards
upon receiving recommendation from NLGJA during each award period.
The
deadline to apply for the Leroy F. Aarons Scholarship Award is February 1. The first
Aarons Award recipient
will be announced March 16 in New York
at NLGJA’s 11th Annual
New York Benefit reception and dinner
to be held at the West Side Loft, 336
West 37th Street, 6:30pm.
The
National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA)
is an organization of journalists,
media professionals, educators and
students who work within the news
industry to foster fair and accurate
coverage of lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender issues.
NLGJA opposes all forms of workplace
bias and provides professional
development to its members. Media Contacts:
Pamela Strother
Executive Director
Office: 202.588.9888, ext. 11
Mobile: 202-486-5990
pstrother@nlgja.org
Eric Hegedus
National President
Mobile: 215-840-3909
ehegedus@gmail.com
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