Each year, the SPJ DC Pro Chapter honors the best in print, broadcast and online journalism for coverage of the D.C. area. This year’s 2024 Dateline Awards contest has attracted new and old entrants. In light of industry news and to allow for more time to submit clips, the deadline is now SUNDAY, MARCH 17.
Submit your best work from 2023 at https://betternewspapercontest.com/DCDatelineAwards.
The contest is open to journalists who cover the Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia and Maryland. You do not have to be an SPJ member to enter.
Finalists and winners will be announced in June at the chapter’s annual Dateline Awards and Hall of Fame dinner at the National Press Club.
Save the date!
More info on tickets and Hall of Fame inductees coming soon.
Cash bar cocktail hour begins 6 p.m. Dinner and gala begin at 7 p.m. (For those on deadline, program likely to start around 7:30 p.m. as dinner proceeds.) Business attire. Cocktail or sun dresses appropriate for women. Tie optional for men, but no shorts please!
Offered by New England First Amendment Coalition
The NEFC provides reporters, watchdogs and other curious community members the knowledge they can use immediately in news gathering, data collection, storytelling and other areas of journalism and First Amendment law.
The lessons are provided in a 30-minute format to accommodate the demanding schedules faced by many working in New England newsrooms. The program is free and open to the public.
Registration for each lesson is required.
Immigration Reporting 101 session led by Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio
The Boston Globe
Current times mean many of our sources may fear repercussions ranging from deportation to court action to violence. How can journalists protect sensitive sources? Erica Hellerstein developed a policy to protect immigrant sources for El Timpano in the San Francisco Bay Area. Kae Petrin co-founded the Trans Journalists Association and is board president for the organization. Margaux Ewen is director of whistleblower protection at The Signals Network, which works with journalists and sources. They’ll share examples and suggest ways to work with sources while minimizing harm.
Registration is required to attend the free Zoom webinar on Wednesday, January 14 at 12 p.m. ET.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS:
- Margaux Ewen is the director of The Signals Network’s Whistleblower Protection Program. Margaux was most recently the director of Freedom House’s Fred Hiatt Program to Free Political Prisoners, a major project to support journalists, human rights defenders and pro-democracy activists who are detained in retaliation for their heroic work.
- Erica Hellerstein is senior immigration, labor and economics reporter for El Tímpano in the San Francisco Bay area. She is an award-winning journalist with more than a decade of experience reporting on global human rights issues. She’s reported from Africa, Latin America, Europe and across the United States while writing about politics, gender, labor, historical memory and the ways geographies real and constructed shape popular opinion and culture.
- Kae Petrin is president of the Trans Journalists Association board, after co-founding the organization in 2020. They are on leave from their full-time job as a data and graphics reporter at Civic News Company for a 2025-26 John S. Knight fellowship at Stanford, exploring ways to improve coverage of trans communities and retention of trans journalists.
The most consequential midterm election stories — who is organizing, how money and messaging are taking shape, and which issues are reshaping voter priorities — are already unfolding, long before the first votes are cast.
Join the National Press Club Journalism Institute and OpenSecrets for a free webinar that will prepare journalists to cover the midterms with financial data top of mind. This interactive session will focus on OpenSecrets’ campaign finance tools that can support your local and regional political reporting in 2026 and beyond.
OpenSecrets launched in 2021 following a merger between the National Institute on Money in Politics and the Center for Responsive Politics, which expanded users’ access to a vast collection of campaign finance data on state and local races, as well as lobbying data.
During this one-hour, virtual session, participants will learn:
– How to find, download, and incorporate public data into their elections-focused storytelling on deadline;
– How to explore Open Secrets’ “Get Local!” donations tracker and other reliable tools; and
– Strategies to strengthen their midterms coverage in 2026 through accountability journalism.
In the spirit of transparency, this session is also open to interested members of the public.
Journalists today aren’t just reporting the news — they’re becoming their own social media managers. As more people turn to social platforms as their primary news source, knowing how to promote your work strategically and thoughtfully has become a core journalism skill. Not a bonus one.
Kassy Cho, editor-in-chief of Almost, will lead this virtual workshop and share best practices for sharing your reporting on different platforms like Instagram and TikTok. That’ll include how to draw people in, visuals 101 and tips for defining goals.
This SPJ DC–requested workshop is designed to help reporters meet audiences where they already are. Bring your breakfast and questions for this early-morning session!
Register for the Zoom session here.
Editor-in-Chief of Almost, Kassy leads an independent media platform delivering social-first news for young people, helping them make sense of global events with truth, clarity and heart. Kassy’s work has reached hundreds of millions worldwide, sparking new conversations and shifting how news is understood across platforms. She is also a passionate advocate for social change through digital storytelling and education, empowering young people to understand, participate in and reshape the world around them.
In this webinar, hosted by Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), we’ll examine how government officials are increasingly labeling routine accountability reporting as “doxxing.” That term originally meant exposing personal information about private people to harass them. But now, government officials are extending it to publication of newsworthy information about public officials. They are intentionally confusing the American public about the role of journalism and even threatening legal action against journalists, newsrooms, and ordinary people for publishing information the public has a right to know.
Register HERE
We’ll hear from journalists who have faced these “doxxing” accusations firsthand:
– Vittoria Elliott, reporter at Wired covering platforms and power
– Gregory Royal Pratt, investigative reporter at the Chicago Tribune
– Doug Sovern, award-winning political reporter, formerly of KCBS Radio
– Charlie Kratovil, founder and editor of New Brunswick Today
– Moderated by Caitlin Vogus, senior adviser, FPF
From federal threats against reporters covering Immigration and Customs Enforcement to state laws restricting what journalists can publish about police, government officials are citing “doxxing” to threaten press freedom. When accountability is reframed as harassment, it chills reporting and limits the public’s access to information about how power is exercised.
I hope you’ll join us for this important discussion and support our work defending the First Amendment by donating at freedom.press/donate.
McDonnell Nieto del Rio joined The Boston Globe in July 2024 as an immigration reporter. At the Globe, she has reported on migrants struggling to find shelter in Massachusetts amidst the state’s housing crisis, how federal immigration policies have affected local residents, and on the impact of immigration enforcement changes on Massachusetts communities, among other issues. Previously, she worked as an immigration reporter at Documented, a nonprofit news site that covers New York City’s immigrant communities and policies that affect them. At Documented, she covered the migrant crisis in New York extensively, and published stories about the conditions in city-run shelters, the exploitation of newly-arrived migrant workers, and the effects of housing instability on migrant families. She also covered immigration detention and immigration courts. Before that, she was a national reporting fellow for the New York Times, writing about any and all national news — including COVID-19, the 2020 election, mass shootings and extreme weather events. McDonnell Nieto del Rio is a native Spanish speaker and has reported on breaking news as an intern for her hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times. She has also worked for CNN in New York and Washington D.C. She holds a bachelor’s degree in History from Williams College, and earned her master’s from Columbia Journalism School.