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About Richard Prince

Richard Prince (Credit: Keith McMillian/Jackson State University)

Richard Prince is a veteran journalist who writes “Richard Prince’s Journal-isms,” the news column on diversity issues in the news media. It appears on journal-isms.com.

He was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame in 2019 as a member of the Washington Post Metro Seven, which filed a complaint against the Post in 1972 charging racial discrimination.

In 2013, Prince received the Ida B. Wells Award from the National Association of Black Journalists and the Medill School at Northwestern University, “given to an individual who has made outstanding efforts to make newsrooms and news coverage more accurately reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.”

In 2010, Prince was honored with the Robert McGruder Award from Kent State University for his promotion of diversity in the news business, as well as a P.E.N. Oakland award.

Washington’s Capital Press Club honored him in 2014 as “The Journalist’s Journalist” for “stellar leadership on coverage of diversity in the media.”

Prince chaired the Diversity Committee of the Association of Opinion Journalists, formerly the National Conference of Editorial Writers. AOJ merged into the American Society of News Editors in 2016, He sits on the ASNE Diversity Committee and continues to lead the committee that administers the Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship, given to an educator who has promoted diversity.

For many years, Prince chaired the Media Monitoring Committee of the National Association of Black Journalists. He continues to moderate the NABJ’s listserve, and hosts the Journal-isms Roundtable, a monthly dinner to facilitate networking among Washington, D.C., journalists.

From its 2002 founding  until 2007, Prince edited the Black College Wire, a news service for black college students that aimed to improve college newspapers and increase their frequency of publication.

Prince was an editorial writer and columnist at the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y., where he worked from 1979 to 1994. There, he became a founding member of the William Monroe Trotter Group, an association of African American newspaper columnists for which he helped maintain a presence on the Web.

He has also worked in investigative journalism, editing The Public i, an online news report produced by the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C., from 1999 to 2001. Prior to that, in another foray into the nonprofit world, he worked at Communities In Schools, a nonprofit that helps keep kids in school.

Prince worked part time as a foreign desk copy editor at the Washington Post from 1999 to 2008. That service follows time there as a reporter, from 1968 to 1977, when he covered local news. He is a native of New York City, having grown up there and in Roosevelt, Long Island, and is a graduate of New York University.

From 2002 to 2016, the “Journal-isms” column originated on the website of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education; also appeared on TheRoot.com from 2010 to June 2018.

Richard Prince was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on Oct. 22, 2013. The interview is archived in the Library of Congress.

For further information:

VIDEOS

Jerry Lanson, professor emeritus at Emerson College and former newspaper editor, spoke with Richard Prince and Issac J. Bailey about the ethical issues facing reporters covering the covering the protests against the killer of George Floyd and police brutality, and the impact the lack of diversity in newsrooms has on coverage. Prince writes “Richard Prince’s Journal-isms,” the news column on diversity issues in the news media.  Bailey is an award-winning journalist and the James K. Batten Professor of Communication Studies at Davidson College. Zoom video recorded on July 9, 2020. (Credit: Society of Professional Journalists, New England chapter)

    • Newseum: Fifty Years Later: The Kerner Report, March 1, 2018
    • Lynne Adrine, director of the Washington Program for Broadcast and Digital Journalism for the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Adrine was a senior producer at ABC News in Washington for 16 years and has worked at CNN, The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, NBC News and CBS News.
      Thomas J. Hrach, associate professor in the Department of Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Memphis and author of “The Riot Report and the News: How the Kerner Commission Changed Media Coverage of Black America.” Hrach has previously taught at Ohio University where he received his doctorate degree. Prior to his academic career, he was a reporter and editor at The Marietta Times in Marietta, Ohio.
      Francisco Vara-Orta, writer for Education Week, a vice president of the Education Writers Association and former president of the San Antonio Association of Hispanic Journalists. He also is a graduate of the Newseum Institute’s Chips Quinn Scholars program, aimed at improving diversity and inclusiveness in the nation’s newsrooms.

     Moderators: Richard Prince, journalist and author of “Journal-isms,” the nation’s premier online journal  about media and diversity;
    Gene Policinski, president of the Newseum Institute and co-author of the nationally published column “Inside the First Amendment.”

From left, Bill Plante, Jelani Cobb, Marie Nelson, Richard Prince (Credit: John Yearwood).
  • Ford Foundation panel: Why Kerner still matters: Community coverage, from disorder to daily life, Detroit, March 5, 2018.
    Richard Prince (moderator), Bill Plante, Marie Nelson, Jelani Cobb (panelists). Introductory marks by Darren Walker, Ford Foundation president. C-SPAN version
  • Kerner Commission Panel — DePauw University, Greencastle, Ind., March 6, 2018
    Established journalists Paul Delaney, Richard Prince, and Ava Greenwell discuss the progress our society has made in the diversification of Journalism since the release of the Kerner Commission Report 50 years ago. Miranda Spivack, moderator

From left: Bill Plante, CBS News veteran, Jelani Cobb; Marie Nelson and Richard Prince (Credit: John Yearwood)

Participants in the 2103 Hall of Fame ceremony of the National Association of Black Journalists. From left: Gregory Hampton Lee Jr., NABJ president; co-MC Isha Sesay, LaVelle E. Neal III of the Star Tribune, accepting the award for Wendell Smith; Betty Winston Baye; Cynthia Tucker; Simeon Booker; Richard Prince, Ida B. Wells Award recipient; Alice Dunnigan’s granddaughter Suzette Dunnigan Whyte; Dunnigan’s 80-year-old son, Robert Dunnigan; co-MC Byron Pitts, Maurice Foster, NABJ executive director. (Jan. 17, 2013)

Inaugural Board of Directors

October 31, 2020

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