Colorful But Colorblind wins Sigma Delta Chi Award

The winner of the 2010 Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award for excellence in journalism in the Digital Media Presentation (Independent) category is Colorful But Colorblind, by the School of Communication, University of Miami, Transitions and the Knight Center for International Media.

Colorful but Colorblind is a project aimed at remedying anti-Roma stereotyping through the creative use of multimedia in reporting minority issues in new member states of the European Union in Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia) and internationally.

The training and production components of the Colorful but Colorblind project were designed and implemented by Rich Beckman, Professor and Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the School of Communication at the University of Miami. The project director was Tihomir Loza from Transitions. Trainers included Jim Seida, Senior Producer, MSNBC.com, Candace Barbot, CEO / Founder at Pulp2Pixel Media Inc. and Ben de la Cruz, Emmy Award winning documentary video producer and reporter at The Washington Post. Story coaches included Travis Fox, Emmy Award winning freelance videographer, NYC, Trevor Green, Senior Video Editor & Operations Assistant, Knight Center for International Media, University of Miami and Seida. Kim Grinfeder, Assistant Professor, School of Communication, University of Miami and Daniel Cloud, Senior Programmer, Knight Center for International Media, University of Miami, directed the web design and programming teams.

Ten multimedia graduate students: Danny Bull, Paula Echevarria, Paul Franz, Nick Harbaugh, Charles Ledford, Lauren Malkani, Nick Maslow, Lauren Santa Cruz, Lauren Whiddon and Chi Yang participated in the project.

Other winners in Online Reporting categories included WebMD, Las Vegas Sun, ProPublica, NPR, CNN.com, The Washington Post, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Politics Daily, FactCheck.org, The Flint journal and The Bay Citizen/New America Media.

Judges chose the winners from more than 1,400 entries in categories covering print, radio, television and online. The awards recognize outstanding work published or broadcast in 2010.

Dating back to 1932, the awards originally honored six individuals for contributions to journalism. The current program began in 1939, when the Society granted the first Distinguished Service Awards. The honors later became the Sigma Delta Chi Awards.

Founded in 1909 as Sigma Delta Chi, SPJ promotes the free flow of information vital to a well- informed citizenry; works to inspire and educate the next generation of journalists; and protects First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and press.