Bridge staff writer wins WSU Spirit of Diversity award
Bridge Magazine staff writer Chastity Pratt Dawsey is the winner of the Working in the Spirit of Diversity award from Wayne State University.
The award recognizes Pratt Dawsey’s success in diversifying news coverage in Michigan.
Alicia Nails, director of Wayne State’s Journalism Institute for Media Diversity, said of Pratt Dawsey:
“She has directed her passion for children, for justice for citizens, and for public accountability towards the execution of stellar reporting. Her writing on the state of education in Michigan, the Flint water crisis and other complex and entangled issues of concern to Southeastern Michigan show her tireless ability to research the details and nuances of these issues. Her years spent analyzing in-depth issues of concern to metro Detroiters makes her voice truly invaluable. She is a living embodiment of the journalist’s charge to ‘afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.’”
Pratt Dawsey has won numerous awards from the Michigan Press Association and the Detroit chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, and a 2015 story following a Detroit teacher was named the best writing in the state by the Michigan Press Association.
She will receive the award April 7 at a reception that will also honor New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet. This event is a fundraiser for WSU’s groundbreaking Journalism Institute for Media Diversity which was founded in 1984 by the Department of Communication and editors of The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press.
You can see examples of Pratt Dawsey’s articles here.
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