Deadline Club Awards program streams May 17
Winners in the 2021 Deadline Club Awards journalism competition will be announced during a virtual ceremony on May 17 at 7 p.m. Recipients of the $12,500 Deadline Club scholarship program and the Robert Greenman Award for Excellence in High School Journalism Teaching and Advising will also be announced during the event.
The Deadline Club’s journalism competition, one of the most prestigious in New York, stretches back to 1957, when the club introduced the James Wright Brown Award honoring outstanding journalistic achievement in the metropolitan area. That first prize was presented to The New York Journal-American for the paper’s role in the capture of George Metesky, the “Mad Bomber.” In 1968, legendary cartoonist Rube Goldberg sculpted his “dead line” for the annual competition that today recognizes the best in journalism across 36 categories.
This year’s Deadline Club Awards received 645 entries across 36 categories covering all media types. Nearly 100 volunteer judges—all experienced journalists—participated in examining each entry for fairness, balance and accuracy; thoroughness, timeliness and clarity; news language and technical skills exhibited; enterprise, resourcefulness and obstacles overcome; effort involved in preparation; and the story’s interest and importance to the public.
While only one winner in each category will take home the coveted “dead line” statuette—affectionately dubbed the Rube after its creator, the iconic Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist and sculpture Rube Goldberg—simply being named a finalist in this contest says a great deal about the quality of each selected work.
Annual awards program conversation features top Washington journalists
The virtual ceremony will feature a live conversation with two of top Washington, DC, journalists on the beat: Julie Pace, Washington bureau chief for The Associated Press, and Kimbriell Kelly, Washington bureau chief for The Los Angeles Times. They will participate in live-streamed discussion on the news of the day, including the political landscape in Washington, how a change in administration has impacted coverage, and what they are watching and paying attention to on the ground in our nation’s capital. Learn more about our speakers below:
Julie Pace is Washington bureau chief for The Associated Press, overseeing more than 100 journalists covering the White House, Congress, national politics, national security and federal agencies. Pace is also one of the AP’s most prominent writers and reporters, focusing on the presidency and national politics.
Prior to assuming the role of bureau chief, Pace was AP’s chief White House correspondent, covering the presidencies of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. She was awarded the Merriman Smith prize for her coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign.
Pace joined the AP in 2007 as a multimedia reporter covering presidential politics, including Obama’s campaign. She previously worked as multimedia reporter in the converged newsrooms of The Tampa Tribune and WFLA in Tampa, Florida, and at e.TV, the first independent television station in South Africa.
Pace is a native of Buffalo, New York, and a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
Kimbriell Kelly is Washington Bureau chief at the Los Angeles Times. Since joining The Times in Washington as deputy editor for enterprise and investigations, Kelly edited the immigration coverage that led to the bureau’s first Pulitzer Prize in 17 years.
Prior to joining The Times, Kelly was an investigative reporter at the Washington Post, where she worked on “Fatal Force,” a team effort investigating officer-involved shootings that won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 2016. Three years later, she was a Pulitzer finalist for a yearlong examination of murder in America’s 55 largest cities.
Kelly came to Washington after working in and around Chicago for almost 15 years at the Daily Herald and the Chicago Reporter, where her investigation into Countrywide Financial’s subprime mortgage lending led to the nation’s largest fair-lending settlement.
Kelly is originally from the Chicago area and is a graduate of Saint Xavier University.
