Ithaca College’s Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) has announced its 2022 Izzy Award winners including journalists Greg B. Smith and Jenni Monet, in company with publications the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Better Government Association (BGA) and Block Club Chicago (BCC).

The Izzy’s are awarded for outstanding achievement in independent media and are given to journalists and independent news outlets across the country. The awards ceremony will be held at an undetermined date at the end of April to recognize the work of the winners. The Izzy Award is named after I. F. “Izzy” Stone, who exposed government deception, racial bigotry and McCarthyism in 1953 in I. F. Stone’s Weekly. 

Smith uncovered that 5,000 public housing apartments in New York City contained lead paint despite being cleared of contamination. This investigation was published by THE CITY, a nonprofit newsroom based in the city, and exposed the city’s failure to ensure the wellbeing of its residents. Jenni Monet reports on the history of violence and injustice against Native Americans for Indigenously. Monet has a free weekly newsletter that gives attention to issues like the disproportionate deaths and disappearances of Native women and girls that larger media fails to address as a constant experience for the community. 

ICIJ published the Pandora Papers which investigated the systems allowing the upper class to hide money and dodge taxes, specifically exposing tax havens within the U.S. The publication by ICIJ resulted in dozens of countries fighting for policy changes and further investigations. 

The BGA and BCC are both nonprofit newsrooms that, together, published a series of reports on corruption in healthcare and the harmful impact on low-income people. The news outlets published investigations on Loretto Hospital in Chicago as well as the damage done when Illinois privatized its healthcare program for the poor.