John Jay College Of Criminal Justice | The City University of New York

   

New York, NY – Maria Hinojosa, one of the country’s foremost broadcast journalists and media entrepreneurs, will be honored as the 2015 “Justice Trailblazer” at a dinner on February 9, 2015, at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, hosted by the John Jay’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice.

Hinojosa is the anchor and executive producer of National Public Radio’s only Latino news and culture show, “Latino USA,” and host and executive producer for the upcoming PBS show “America by the Numbers with Maria Hinojosa.” Both shows are produced by Futuro Media, an independent nonprofit organization Hinojosa founded in 2010 to produce multimedia journalism about diverse American communities.

The annual Trailblazer award, which honors individuals from the media and related fields who have expanded public awareness about the challenges and complexities of criminal justice, will be presented by John Jay President Jeremy Travis and Rossana Rosado, former CEO of El Diario/La Prensa, and now a Distinguished Lecturer at John Jay.

Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black, was named Justice Trailblazer in 2014; David Simon, creator of “The Wire,” was honored in 2013.

The winners of the 10th annual John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Prizes for Excellence in Criminal Justice Journalism will also be announced at the dinner.

“The Justice Trailblazer Award and the Guggenheim Prizes for Excellence in Journalism have become an important part of the media landscape and valued barometers for gauging the most pressing justice issues,” said Jeremy Travis, President of John Jay College. “Ms. Hinojosa continues the line of most deserving honorees with her stellar reporting on Latino communities in the United States and the inequities they face within the criminal justice system.”

Hinojosa’s stories have included exposés on prison hunger strikes, immigration detention and teenage victims of sexual harassment.

“Maria’s journalism has systematically called attention to the challenges faced by communities of color, particularly the Latino community, in navigating our justice system,” said Stephen Handelman, director of John Jay’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice. “But we are also proud to honor her for giving voice to the next generation of media voices that will drive real change in the years ahead.”

Hinojosa’s 25-year history as an award-winning journalist includes reporting for PBS, CBS, WNBC, CNN, NPR and CBS Radio and anchoring the Emmy Award-winning talk show “Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One.” She is the author of two books and has won dozens of awards, including four Emmys, the John Chancellor Award, the Studs Terkel Community Media Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award and the Ruben Salazar Lifetime Achievement Award. She is currently the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Chair of Latin American and Latino Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, and lives with her husband and their son and daughter in New York.

The John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium is the only national gathering that brings together journalists, legislators, policymakers, scholars and practitioners for candid on-the-record discussions on emerging issues of U.S. criminal justice. Confirmed speakers for the 2015 sessions include: Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson; Kansas City Police Chief Daryl Forte; New York City Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte and Acting Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics Bill Sabol.

Overall support for the conference and reporting fellowships comes from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Ford Foundation, and the Pew Center on the States Public Safety Performance Project. The Center on Media, Crime and Justice, established at John Jay College in 2006, is the nation's only practice- and research-oriented think tank devoted to encouraging and developing high-quality reporting on criminal justice, and to promoting better-informed public debate on the complex 21^st century challenges of law enforcement, public security and justice in a globalized urban society. The Center also publishes the nation’s most comprehensive daily online news and resource service for criminal justice—The Crime Report. For more information, visit http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/cmcj or www.thecrimereport.org

About John Jay College of Criminal Justice: An international leader in educating for justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York offers a rich liberal arts and professional studies curriculum to upwards of 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 135 nations. In teaching, scholarship and research, the College approaches justice as an applied art and science in service to society and as an ongoing conversation about fundamental human desires for fairness, equality and the rule of law. For more information, visit www.jjay.cuny.edu.