NABJ Announces 2026 Hall of Fame Inductees and Special Honors Recipients

The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) is proud to announce its 2026 Hall of Fame inductees and 2026 Special Honors recipients.

Awards will be presented during the #NABJ26 Convention & Career Fair in Atlanta, Aug 12 – 16, 2026.

The Hall of Fame Induction and Luncheon will be held Friday, Aug. 14, at 12 PM EDT.

Special Honors will be announced during the Opening Ceremony on Wednesday, Aug. 12 at 6 p.m. ET, Hall of Fame Induction and Luncheon on Friday, Aug. 14 at 12 p.m. ET. and the Salute to Excellence Awards Gala on Saturday, Aug. 15, at 6:00 p.m. ET.

Registration and ticket purchases for #NABJ26 events are available at NABJConvention.com.

2026 Hall of Fame Inductees

NABJ will pay homage to the following legendary Black journalists and communicators who have made outstanding contributions to the news and media industries:

• Maurice DuBois is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, most recently serving as co-anchor of “The CBS Evening News,” with previous anchor and reporting roles at WCBS and WNBC in New York and television stations in Chicago, Sacramento, and Seattle. His interview subjects span American life and culture, including “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz, Cardi B, NBA Hall-of-Famer Allen Iverson, and the Central Park Five, and he has hosted specials on mental health, kids and violence, the origins of hip-hop, breast cancer, and ticker-tape parades. The recipient of five Emmys, alongside honors from the Associated Press and the New York State Broadcasters Association.
• Lewis W. Diuguid is the chair of the political action committee of the National Association for Multicultural Education and a longtime journalist whose career at The Kansas City Star spanned from his 1977 arrival as a reporter and photographer through his service as vice president of community resources from 1999 to 2009 and editorial board member and columnist from 1999 to 2016. He is the author of “A Teacher’s Cry: Expose the Truth About Education Today” (2004), “Discovering the Real America: Toward a More Perfect Union” (2007), “Our Fathers: Making Black Men” (2017), and “Exploring Cuba: Erasing Fears through Multicultural Education” (2024). A founding member and treasurer of the Kansas City Association of Black Journalists, his many honors include the 2000 Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, the 2014 Carter G. Woodson Service Award and 2017 Philip C. Chinn Book Award from NAME, and the 2017 Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism from Harvard University, which named him a 2017 Knight Visiting Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism.
• Sidmel K. Estes was a pioneering television news executive, media consultant, educator, and transformational leader in American journalism whose work reshaped Atlanta broadcasting and advanced Black journalists nationwide. Over a 27-year career at WAGA-TV (now FOX 5 Atlanta) beginning in 1979, she rose from assignment editor to executive producer and co-created Good Day Atlanta, helping make it the market’s top morning show and establishing the “Good Day” franchise model later adopted across the FOX network. Elected president of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) in 1991, she became the organization’s first female leader, expanded membership to more than 2,000 journalists, helped create the UNITY coalition, and advanced the landmark Kerner Plus 25: A Call for Action report. Her impact was widely recognized: she was named Media Woman of the Year by the Atlanta chapter of the National Association of Media Women; honored when Mayor Andrew Young declared November 18, 1988, “Sidmel Estes-Sumpter Day” in Atlanta; listed among Ebony magazine’s 100 Most Influential Black Americans; and awarded the Silver Circle Award by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Estes-Sumpter remains a defining figure in modern broadcast journalism—an architect of opportunity whose influence continues to shape NABJ, Atlanta media, and the national conversation on representation and responsibility in journalism.
• Jackie Greene is an award-winning journalist, media technology executive, and Chief Operating Officer of Consult GR Team in Washington, D.C., where he leads strategic efforts focused on education, healthcare, technology, and multimedia initiatives across African Diaspora communities and the African continent. A member of the start-up team of USA TODAY, the first national newspaper in the United States and the first to regularly publish color photographs, he spent more than 33 years at Gannett Co., Inc. before his 2015 departure. An NABJ member since 1978, he served ten years on the Executive Board, including six as Treasurer and four as Regional Director, helped launch what evolved into the multimedia Student Projects, received the NABJ President’s Award in 2007, and in 2001 became the first elected President of UNITY Journalists of Color, Inc. 
• Ernest Holsendolph is a first-generation college graduate of Columbia University whose 42-year journalism career began at The Call & Post, Cleveland’s Black newspaper, in 1961, following service in the U.S. Army’s Security Agency intelligence unit. He moved to daily journalism at the Cleveland Press in 1963 and covered the historic March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech, then went on to write for Fortune, The Washington Star, and The New York Times, where he covered deregulation and anchored the team that won a Gerald Loeb Award for its coverage of the breakup of AT&T. He received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in 2000, published his memoir “Let ME Tell It!” in 2018, and earned a special achievement award from NABJ for counseling and mentoring an entire generation of Black journalists.
• Jackie Jones is a veteran journalist and dean of the School of Global Journalism & Communication at Morgan State University whose newsroom career spans the Detroit Free Press, New York Newsday, The Philadelphia Daily News, and The Washington Post, including service on the New York Newsday team that won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Coverage. A former NABJ board member who represented the organization on the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication for more than 20 years, she now serves on the Council’s Accrediting Committee and the MDDC Press Foundation Board, and has taught at Penn State, NYU, Wayne State, and Howard.
• Jayne Kennedy was more than the “It girl”; she was a cherished role model, particularly for African-American women. She is best known for her ground-breaking tenure on the Emmy Award-winning CBS’ The NFL Today as one of the first national female sports anchors and the very first African-American woman in that role in what is often called the greatest pregame show on television. In 2018, she was inducted into the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and in 2022, she received the National Sports Media Association’s Roone Arledge Award for Innovation and Black Enterprise’s Women of Power Summit Legacy Award. In August 2025, she was honored with NABJ’s Sam Lacy Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award, and her long-awaited memoir, Plain Jayne, was recently released on Andscape/Disney Books.

• Debra Adams Simmons is Editor-in-Chief of Special Editorial Projects at GBH Public Media. Over a four-decade career, she has served as Executive Editor for History and Culture at National Geographic, vice president for strategic diversity initiatives at The Walt Disney Company, and editor and managing editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, before becoming a vice president at its parent company, Advance Local. The immediate past board chair of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, she has served as president of the Associated Press Media Editors and on the boards of the American Society of News Editors, the International Women’s Media Foundation, and Signal Ohio, and continues to serve on NABJ’s Strategic Planning Committee. A proud Nieman Foundation Fellow at Harvard, seven-time Pulitzer Prize juror, and judging leader for the National Magazine Awards, she has consulted for the Knight Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan.

2026 Special Honors Awards

NABJ will honor the following journalists and communicators for their groundbreaking accomplishments and work to support the Black community in the media. 

 Angelo B. Henderson Community Service Award — Christina Carrega

• Christina Carrega is an award-winning journalist, educator, and nationally respected voice in criminal justice reporting whose career has been defined by service, truth-telling, and community impact. Her reporting and editorial roles include Capital B, where she served as inaugural National Criminal Justice Reporter, alongside CNN, ABC News, The New York Daily News, The New York Post, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and The Queens Daily Eagle, with coverage spanning wrongful convictions, landmark trials, systemic failures, and fraud investigations. She also served as a public information officer for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office under the late Kenneth P. Thompson, Brooklyn’s first Black elected district attorney. A two-time first-place winner of the New York Association of Black Journalists’ Best Spot News Award and former NYABJ deputy secretary, she serves on the board of Princess Chambers Inc., is helping develop a Legal Affairs Task Force for NABJ, and supports emerging journalists through youth journalism workshops. A first-generation American raised in Brooklyn, Christina is a proud graduate of St. John’s University.

Best Practices Award — Outlier Media

• Outlier Media is a Detroit nonprofit newsroom that, since its founding in 2016, has reimagined how local journalism serves communities by centering its work on the real information needs of residents, particularly those most affected by systemic inequities. Rather than simply reporting on events, Outlier identifies and fills gaps in access to critical information, helping residents navigate housing, utilities, transportation, and government services through structured information needs assessments that let community members shape coverage priorities. Its TXT OUTLIER service exemplifies this model by delivering verified, practical information directly via text message while enabling one-on-one communication with reporters, and the organization complements its service journalism with investigative and accountability reporting that exposes systemic failures. Initiatives like Detroit Documenters invite residents to participate directly in the reporting process, and Outlier collaborates with other local newsrooms to share resources and avoid duplicating coverage, ultimately empowering Detroiters with the information they need to make informed decisions, hold institutions accountable, and build a more equitable, participatory civic landscape.

Chuck Stone Lifetime Achievement Award — Brent Staples

• Brent Staples cultivated a national audience for his essays on race, class, culture, and politics during his tenure on The New York Times Editorial Board from 1990 to 2025, helping shape the paper’s editorial policy while insisting that historical context remain central to understanding the news, particularly on civil rights. In 2019 he received the Pulitzer Prize for writing on the legacies of slavery with “extraordinary moral clarity,” using his Pulitzer day remarks to honor his enslaved ancestors and his great-great-grandmother Somerville Staples, who came of age in the chaos following the Nat Turner rebellion of 1831. He holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Chicago and is the author of the memoir “Parallel Time,” a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Selected by Harvard to deliver the W.E.B. DuBois Lectures, he most recently received an honorary doctorate from Queens College of the City University of New York for “using his talents to confront racial injustice publicly.” His credo, “History is the only education; everything else is just training,” continues to guide his work.

Ida B. Wells Award — Georgia Fort

• Georgia Fort is a three-time Midwest Emmy Award-winning journalist, 2025 Bush Fellow, and founder of BLCK Press whose reporting placed her at the center of national conversations about press freedom as one of only two reporters in the courtroom for the sentencing of Derek Chauvin. With nearly 17 years of experience across commercial and nonprofit radio and television news, she has built a reputation as a thought leader in equitable journalism, and in 2023 launched “Here’s the Truth,” an independently produced television news program that earned 12 Regional Emmy nominations and won three. Her recognitions include honors from the National Association for Women in Business, the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists, and the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal’s “40 Under 40.” In 2022 she founded the nonprofit Center for Broadcast Journalism, which later acquired Power 104.7 FM to mobilize the next generation of media professionals, and her continuing work is building a next-generation media ecosystem focused on representation and sustainable independent journalism.

Journalism Educator of the Year Award — Dr. Dorothy M. Bland

• Dr. Dorothy M. Bland is a journalism professor at the University of North Texas Mayborn School of Journalism, a consultant, and a former dean with more than 15 years in higher education and 25 years as an award-winning journalist, news executive, and publisher. A lifetime NABJ member, UNT NABJ chapter adviser, and treasurer of the NABJ Academic Task Force, she is the co-author of the award-winning “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategies: Learning from Journalism and Mass Communication Programs with Professional Impact,” with bylines ranging from USA Today to the Journal of Social Media in Society. Under her leadership as Mayborn dean, the school set enrollment growth records, raised more than $2 million, and launched a fully online master’s of science in digital communication analytics, and she founded the UNT Multimedia High School Workshop in 2014, teaching more than 1,400 students to date. Among her many honors is the 2025 Dow Jones News Fund Richard J. Levine Journalism Champion Award. She earned her PhD from Florida State University, her MBA from George Washington University, and a bachelor’s from Arkansas State University, with additional certificates from the Maynard Institute, Northwestern’s Media Management Center, and Harvard’s Institute for Management and Leadership in Higher Education.

Journalist of Distinction Award — Brandi S. Cummings

• Brandi S. Cummings is an award-winning journalist with more than 20 years in television news and a weekday morning anchor at KCRA 3 in Sacramento, where she is known for editorial leadership, credibility, and deep community connection. Her career includes work at WAVY-TV, WTOC, and WIS, with seven NABJ Salute to Excellence Awards, Associated Press honors, and multiple Emmy nominations to her name, alongside a former adjunct teaching role at Hampton University Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communication. As founding president of NABJ Sacramento, she has driven significant chapter growth, expanded membership, and secured major funding for scholarships and programming, while also contributing nationally to NABJ conventions, mentorship, and scholarship initiatives. A graduate of Clark Atlanta University and Lasell College, she lives in Sacramento with her husband and two children, extending her impact through community service, nonprofit leadership, and programs that empower young women.

Journalist of the Year Award —  Beatrice Elizabeth Peterson

• Beatrice Elizabeth Peterson is a National Enterprise Reporter at ABC News covering the White House, national security, intelligence, Congress, and elections, with more than a decade of authoritative reporting on federal power, Black political organizing, and the U.S. intelligence community. A second-generation Washingtonian, she has covered both Tulsi Gabbard and Kamala Harris since 2012, and in November 2025 secured the only known long-form exclusive interview with Director of National Intelligence Gabbard, a 90-minute conversation tracing her path to the nation’s top intelligence post. Her work continues to drive readership; in February 2026, five of the ten most-read stories on ABCNews.com carried her byline. Before joining ABC News in 2018, she spent four years at Politico, where she created and hosted “Today in Trumpworld.” A graduate of Trinity Washington University with a master’s from Columbia Journalism School, her work has been recognized by Glamour and Harper’s Bazaar.

Legacy Award — Karen Carter Richards

• Karen Carter Richards is the CEO and Publisher of Forward Times Publishing Company, Inc., the leading multimedia organization behind the largest Black-owned, independently produced weekly newspaper in the southern United States. A second-generation publisher with more than four decades in the family business, she carries forward the legacy of her parents, founders Julius P. Carter and Lenora “Doll” Carter, who established the historic publication in 1960, and has transformed Forward Times into a modern multimedia platform while preserving its mission as a trusted voice for African Americans in Houston and beyond; notably, the publication has never missed a week of print. In 2010, following her mother’s passing, she founded The Julius and Lenora Carter Scholarship & Youth Foundation, which provides scholarships, internships, and career exposure to low-to-moderate-income students across Greater Houston. Her honors include the Women on the Move Award, Top 25 Women of Houston, and the Mary McLeod Bethune Impact Service Award, and she served as Chair of the National Newspaper Publishers Association from 2019 to 2023, was named Publisher of the Year in 2018, and currently chairs the NNPA Fund. She is also a proud mother and grandmother.

Michael J. Feeney Emerging Journalist of the Year Award — Tamia Fowlkes

• Tamia Fowlkes is a Public Investigator for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, covering healthcare, politics, housing, disability, and race, with reporting that seeks accountability for wrongdoing and sheds light on undercovered communities. She earned her Master of Science from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and her bachelor’s in journalism and political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before joining the Journal Sentinel, she completed internships at The Washington Post, “The Rachel Maddow Show,” USA Today Network, and the Wisconsin State Journal, and previously served as an intern on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Investigative Watchdog Team as part of the Pulitzer Prize finalist “Wires and Fires” investigation.

Patricia L. Tobin Media Professional Award — Chelsea G. Fuller

• Chelsea G. Fuller is the Senior Strategist and Managing Partner of Black Alder LLC and Co-Executive Director of Black Alder Labs, a journalist, narrative scientist, and movement strategist whose work sits at the intersection of media and social justice. For more than a decade she has held senior communications roles across the progressive left, including Senior Director of Communications at Movement for Black Lives, Vice President of Communications at TIME’S UP, and Deputy Director of Communications at Blackbird, leading successful campaigns and messaging strategies that shifted national and international narratives around race, white supremacy, patriarchal violence, and community safety. Her work helping journalists adjust their reporting on systemic issues has produced more accurate, nuanced coverage of sexual violence, the criminalization of Black children, and police violence, and Black Alder Labs recently released “The Cost of the Story,” a first-of-its-kind national research study on the impact of reporting on racialized and gender-based violence. Chelsea holds a BA from West Virginia University, an MA from American University, and is pursuing a Master of Divinity at Yale Divinity School.

Student Journalist of the Year Award — Morgan Olivia Norris

• Morgan Olivia Norris believes journalism is an art, a science, and a service. The Atlanta native earned her Bachelor’s in Journalism from Hampton University in 2025 and completed her Master’s at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism as a full-ride Dean’s Scholar within weeks. At Hampton, she rose through every role at WHOV-TV, and a package on gas inflation caught the attention of the Emma Bowen Foundation, leading to three summers at FOX 5 Atlanta and the 2024 Emma Bowen Student of the Year award. She represented Hampton at the White House HBCU Press Briefing with Vice President Kamala Harris, became a Washington Media Scholars Fellow and AT&T Rising Future Maker, collaborated with Mother Jones on the anti-DEI movement at the Virginia Military Institute, and earned the Hearst Journalism Award for Explanatory Reporting through her InsideClimate News documentary on flood prevention in Hampton Roads. After losing all of her hair to alopecia areata in spring 2025, she earned the Virginia Associated Press Broadcaster Scholarship, a White House Correspondents Association Truth in Reporting Scholarship, and a Founders Scholarship through the 2025 NABJ Student Multimedia Projects, while a Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium Fellowship took her reporting to South Korea, where her work on glutathione mismarketing was published by the Pulitzer Center and The Korea Herald. A member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., she hopes to serve as an on-camera reporter and anchor delivering contextual narratives that transform public interest into understanding.

Percy Qoboza Foreign Journalist of the Year Award — Abraham Jiménez Enoa

• Abraham Jiménez Enoa is the author of “The Hidden Island” and “Aterrizar en el mundo,” co-director of the documentary “Isla Familia,” and a former columnist for The Washington Post with bylines in The New York Times, BBC, El País, and Al Jazeera. His honors include the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Inter American Press Association’s Journalism Excellence Award, the One Young World Journalist of the Year Award, the Lyra McKee Award for Bravery, the Magnitsky Human Rights Award, and the Gabo Foundation’s Michael Jacobs Fellowship. He is a co-founder of El Estornudo, the independent Cuban magazine that helped redefine literary journalism across the Spanish-speaking world.

The following awards will be announced during the Convention:

• President’s Award — Awarded by the NABJ President to recognize exemplary service or support of the organization.
• Thumbs-down Award —  This award calls attention to an individual or organization for especially insensitive, racist or stereotypical reporting, commentary, photography, or cartoons about the Black community or for engaging in practices at odds with the goals of the National Association of Black Journalists.