55th Annual Competition 
Fellowship Winners for 2020

Final Judges for the 55th Annual Competition:
Sandy Close – founder, Ethnic Media Services, Pacific News Service and New America Media
Laura Parker – staff writer, National Geographic, and APF fellow (’96)
Joseph Shapiro – NPR News Investigations correspondent, and APF fellow (’90)

For Immediate Release. Contact: 202-246-3751

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ten journalists will pursue topics ranging from justice in American jails to environmental killings across the globe, as the newest recipients of an Alicia Patterson Foundation grant, American journalism’s oldest writing fellowship.

The foundation announced the winners of the annual fellowships today, which are designed to foster independent in-depth reporting on national and international affairs. The Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship program for journalists was established in 1965 in memory of Alicia Patterson, who was editor and publisher of Newsday for nearly twenty-three years before her death in 1963.

The Fellows are awarded $40,000 for a 12-month grant and $20,000 for a six-month grant.

The new Fellows will spend their fellowship months traveling, researching, and writing articles on their projects for the APF REPORTER, a quarterly web magazine published by the Foundation. Every year, the Fellows’ articles and photo essays are widely distributed through newspapers, news services, magazines, and websites worldwide.

The winners were selected through a highly competitive process of screening by two panels of judges, as well as submitting detailed proposals, examples of past work, and references.

More than 405 reporters, editors, and photographers have won Alicia Patterson fellowships since the foundation was established in 1965 to honor the former publisher of Newsday.

The foundation’s directors named one Fellow in honor of Josephine Patterson Albright, who was a major benefactor of the foundation. The Josephine Patterson Albright fellow is Leigh Ann Henion, of Boone, NC., who is examining the rights of nature movement.
This is the fifth year a fellow will be named for Cissy Patterson, who was Alicia Patterson’s aunt and editor of the Washington Times-Herald. The fellowship is given to a journalist pursuing a topic in science of the environment. Jonathan Mingle, a freelance journalist from Lincoln, VT, was chosen for the honor. He will be examining natural gas and its impact on the world.

For program information and applications for the 56th annual competition, contact:

Alicia Patterson Foundation, 

1100 Vermont Ave. NW, Suite 900,

Washington, DC 20005

Phone: (202) 393-5995 

Email: info@aliciapatterson.org. 

Applications also may be downloaded at: www.aliciapatterson.org.

Applications must be submitted by October 1, 2020.