IJJ, Now Independent, Continues
Support of Social Justice Journalism

The Institute for Justice and Journalism (IJJ), continuing its mission of supporting social justice enterprise stories, enters 2010 as an independent nonprofit organization after nine successful years at the University of Southern California.

The institute was created at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication in 2000 with Ford Foundation funding to strengthen reporting on justice and injustice. Offering online resources, professional fellowships and forums, and direct support for enterprise journalism, IJJ has developed a network of hundreds of journalists and experts.

With core funding from Ford to USC for IJJ ending in the summer of 2009, the institute incorporated and received Internal Revenue Service tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(3) public charity.

“We're grateful to the Ford Foundation for nine years of generous funding and to USC Annenberg for being our institutional parent,” said Steve Montiel, founding director. “Going independent is the best route now for building on our network and track record, and making IJJ sustainable over the long term.”

Montiel, now part of the media relations team at the University of California Office of the President in Oakland, continues to lead IJJ as president of the board of directors, focusing on fund raising and organizational development. The other directors are Sharon Rosenhause, retired managing editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel (board secretary); Conrad Freund, chief operating officer of the LA84 Foundation (board chief financial officer/treasurer); John L. Dotson Jr., publisher emeritus of the Akron Beacon Journal and a director of the Washington Post Company; and Edna Negron, a journalism professor teaching digital journalism at Ramapo College of New Jersey

In addition to Bobby Kirkwood, who served as IJJ’s program coordinator at USC, the institute is working closely with Frank Sotomayor, who was IJJ associate director and Senior Fellowon Justice and Journalism Fellowships. Sotomayor also is serving as editor of the institute’s evolvingweb site, www.JustNews.org. The site, designedto serve as a digital hub for journalists covering social justice issues, will feature work supported by IJJ through its fellowships and Justice and Journalism Fund. It will also include a blog by Daniel Kowalski, an immigration attorney and IJJ Senior Fellow, that will offer tips and resources for journalists covering this hot-button topic.

Aimed at journalists covering immigration, criminal justice, civil rights, environmental justice and other issues, www.JustNews.org will spotlight IJJ-supported enterprise stories and commentary; and offer information about reporting resources, Web links to expert sources and blogging, beginning with the immigration blog.

A new member of the IJJ team, Warren Vieth, a visiting professor of journalism at the University of Oklahoma’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, is serving as Senior Fellow and project director for the next Justice and Journalism Fellowship, “Immigration in the Heartland.”

The program, funded by a grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, will bring a group of up to 15 IJJ Fellows to OU’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication and to Dallas for a weeklong immersion in the often contentious issues of immigration in the Midwest, South and other non-border states. Journalists Julio Cesar Ortiz of KMEX-TV Univision 34 in Los Angeles and Dianne Solis of the Dallas Morning News will join Kowalski as Senior Fellows in the program.

Meanwhile, the institute maintains its partnership with The City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. For the past four years, IJJ has collaborated on fellowships, forums and web-based projects with the IJJ-affiliated Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College, a partnership that includes Criminal Justice Journalists and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

This past summer, 10 journalists participated in an IJJ environmental justice fellowship program supported by the McCormick Foundation. IJJ collaborated with Columbia College Chicagoin the Chicago portion of the program, which also included sessions in Los Angeles.

IJJ will continue fellowships for journalists at mainstream and ethnic media outlets, as well as for independent and nontraditional reporters. The Justice and Journalism Fund has provided more than $100,000 for enterprise stories about social justice issues, books on crime and punishment issues, and Celeste Fremon’s news Web site and blog, www.WitnessLA.com, read regularly by policy makers and cited as an authoritative voice in the opinion sections of The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and other media outlets. Stories supported by the Fund are distributed across multiple media.

Outcomes of Justice and Journalism programs involving more than 500 journalists and experts include exemplary stories and commentary for newspapers, the Web, magazines, radio and television, books and documentary films. Stories produced by IJJ Fellows have won George Polk and Daniel Schorr awards, among others, and have provided context for policy debates about issues ranging from juvenile justice and prison sentencing reform to environmental health and immigration. Partnerships resulted in some of New America Media’s earliest multilingual polling, and context for public debate about a range of issues, including the California ballot measure that would have restricted access to racial information if it had not been rejected by voters and another ballot measure that unsuccessfully attempted to overturn California’s Three Strikes law.

IJJ Senior Fellows have developed and taught “justice journalism” courses at schools   from USC Annenberg to Princeton University. The IJJ network also has been involved in a number of leadership initiatives, including one, facilitated by Senior Fellow Joe Domanick, that resulted in a ground-breaking Los Angeles “second-chance court.” This program provides training and treatment alternatives for women, instead of having them reenter prison.