Jerry Mitchell (investigative Reporter) - Awards

Awards

For his investigative work, Mitchell has won more than 20 national awards, including a MacArthur Foundation genius grant and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service. Mitchell has also received the Heywood Broun Award, the Sidney Hillman Award, the American Legion's Fourth Estate Award, the National Association of Black Journalists' Award for Enterprise Reporting, the Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Award and the Inland Press Association Award. The Southeastern chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates decided in April 2006 to give Mitchell its first-ever award for Journalist of the Year.

In October 1998, Mitchell was recognized along with three other journalists at the Kennedy Center in Washington. In 1999, Gannett honored him with the Outstanding Achievement by an Individual Award, the Best Investigative Reporting Award, the Best In-Depth Reporting Award and its highest honor - the William Ringle Outstanding Achievement Career Award - making him the youngest recipient ever of the award. Two years later, he received the Best Beat Reporting Award from Gannett for his continued work to shine light on these dark crimes of the past, and in 2002, Gannett honored Mitchell as one of its top 10 journalists in the company over the past quarter century.

Peers have recognized Mitchell's work. In 2000, he received the Silver Em Award from the University of Mississippi, where he was called "a true hero of contemporary American journalism." In 2002, editors Judith and William Serrin featured his work in their anthology of the nation's best journalism over the past three centuries, Muckraking! The Journalism That Changed America.

In November 2005, Mitchell became the youngest recipient ever of Columbia University's John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism for his 17 years of pursuing justice.

In 2006 Mitchell was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist, the winner of the George Polk Award for Justice Reporting, the winner of the Vernon Jarrett Award for Investigative Reporting, the Tom Renner Award for Crime Reporting from Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the Outstanding Achievement by an Individual Award (for the second time). Later in 2006, Mitchell won the Toni House Journalism Award from the American Judicature Society.

Mitchell was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Colby College when he was the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Journalism Award, given by Colby College to a journalist who displayed the fearlessness Lovejoy did in decrying slavery in editorials in Missouri and Illinois, only to become the nation's first martyr to freedom of the press in 1837.