WASHINGTON – Celebrate some of the Capitol area’s top reportage at the annual Dateline Awards dinner of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Tickets now are available for the June 9 event at the National Press Club for $150 a plate.
At the event, SPJ-DC will announce winners of its 2026 Dateline Awards competition, recognizing some of the best coverage produced last year in the District of Columbia’s metropolitan area.
The chapter also will induct three new honorees into its Hall of Fame and recognize another for distinguished public service. Each will give brief remarks, as will individuals they have selected to introduce them.
The Hall of Fame honorees and their introducers are:
- Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for The Associated Press. At the AP since 2006, he mainly covers climate change – plus the environment, weather, physics, astronomy and hurricanes. Borenstein also teaches journalism at New York University’s campus in Washington, D.C. He will be introduced by Darlene Superville, who covers the White House for the AP, with a special emphasis on first ladies. She co-authored the 2022 book “Jill: A Biography of the First Lady,” about Jill Biden.
- Kevin Naff, editor and co-owner of the Washington Blade, published since 1969 and now the nation’s oldest LGBTQ news publication. Naff, a co-owner of the media company that also publishes the Los Angeles Blade, is the author of “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality – And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away” (2023). He will be introduced by Greg Alexander, a D.C.-based freelance journalist and author. The two worked together at The Baltimore Sun in the late 1990s.
- Cheryl W. Thompson, an investigative correspondent for National Public Radio, associate professor of journalism at George Washington University, and author of “Forgotten Souls: The Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen” (2026). She was reporting coach for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast “No Compromise.” Earlier, during 20-plus years with The Washington Post, she was on teams that won two Pulitzers for national reporting. She will be introduced by Leonard Downie Jr., an author of seven books (two with co-writers) and professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He concluded his 44 years at the Post as its executive editor, from 1984 through 2008, a period during which the newsroom won 25 Pulitzers. In 2002, SPJ’s national organization recognized Downie as a Fellow of the Society.
The Distinguished Service Award will go to Karen Attiah, a prize-winning journalist whose work examines the intersections of race, culture, gender, media and international affairs. Attiah, the founding Global Opinions editor for The Washington Post, left the news organization last fall. Now on Substack, her “Golden Hour” column explores “writing, fighting and beauty in dark times.” Attiah will be introduced by David E. Hoffman, an author and journalist. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes: in 2010 for the nonfiction book “The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy” and in 2024 for his editorial writing for the Post.
The event also will honor six students awarded scholarships from the chapter’s SDX Foundation of Washington. Athena Dyer, Jake Kauderer, Elizabeth Polo and Brendan Russell will continue their studies at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, as will Nathan Ferraro at George Mason University’s Department of Communication. Tierra Stone expects to complete her studies this fall semester at Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism and Communication.
The evening’s master of ceremonies will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
The event will begin at 6 p.m. with a cash-bar cocktail hour, followed by dinner at 7 p.m.
Click here to purchase tickets, and don’t forget to check more details on the first page of the invitation, explaining how to adjust the Zeffy tip. After your purchase, please save the thank you note with the QR code.