Society of Professional Journalists, Oklahoma, will celebrate 2017 awards in Stillwater
Published: March 12th, 2017
OKLAHOMA CITY – The Society of Professional Journalists Oklahoma (SPJ OK) Professional Chapter will feature acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winner and Washington Post Investigative Editor David Fallis as the keynote speaker as the chapter honors the state’s top journalists during its annual awards banquet on April 22 in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
The evening will begin Saturday (April 22) at 6 p.m. with a reception, followed by the awards banquet at 7 p.m., at the Meditations Catering & Banquet Facility, 1205 N. Country Club Rd., in Stillwater.
SPJ OK will recognize a wide variety of reporting styles, including “Best of the Best,” Magazine, Newspaper, Online, Public Relations, Television and Radio.
SPJ OK will also recognize the winners of the “Carter Bradley First Amendment Award,” “Teacher of the Year Award” and the “Lifetime Achievement Award.”
Keynote Speaker Fallis, a Tulsa native, worked at The OU Daily Newspaper before graduating with a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma. He started his professional career as a police reporter for the now-defunct Tulsa Tribune.
Before joining the Post in 1999, he wrote and edited for The Tulsa World. Today, he serves as the Deputy Editor for the Washington Post’s Investigations Unit.
In 2015, Fallis helped lead and edit a Washington Post team of journalists that identified and analyzed nearly 1,000 fatal shootings by police nationwide. (http://city-sentinel.com/2016/07/by-the-numbers-washington-post-investigation-in-2015-found-990-police-involved-killings-in-u-s/)
For that year-long work, The Post was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, the Polk Award for National Reporting and a Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service.
The police shootings project also was recognized as a finalist for The Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, The Goldsmith Award, the Scripps Howard Award for Investigative Reporting and IRE’s Innovation in Investigative Journalism award.
SPJ OK award banquet tickets are $50. To purchase tickets go here:
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