Deadline Club Honors Bronx Teacher
The Deadline Club is pleased to announce that Deborah Porterfield, a journalism teacher and adviser at Bronx River High School, is the 2026 recipient of the Robert Greenman Award for Excellence in High School Journalism Teaching and Advising.
The award, along with a video honor, was announced at the Deadline Club’s annual journalism awards dinner at the Harvard Club of New York City on Thursday, May 14 alongside winners of The Deadline Club Awards.
Porterfield advises the Bronx River News, which she launched in 2021. The newspaper’s stories, which have focused on topics such as ICE’s impact on schools, vehicles running red lights at the school crosswalk and campus safety concerns, are often featured on Chalkbeat, a national organization that covers education.
During the past five years, Bronx River News staff members have won numerous awards in Baruch College’s High School Newsies contest; received grants to attend journalism conferences in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, St. Louis and Nashville; earned best of SNO writing awards from a national site that hosts scholastic newspapers; and been selected as a co-winner for the Best Investigative Reporting category of the George Polk High School Student Awards.
“We are so proud of Ms. Porterfield,” senior Myess Hammouri, a staff writer, said. “She does an amazing job of teaching us to lead ourselves while she’s managing behind the scenes.”
Bronx River News Managing Editor Zoe Reyes said Porterfield will go out of the way to make sure students take advantage of all the opportunities available to them. The junior said Porterfield is trying to arrange swimming lessons for her students because many don’t know how to swim and hope to attend a national high school journalism conference in Florida next year.
“Watching them blossom is more than about journalism,” Porterfield said. “It’s exposing them to a big wide world.”
As a certified Journalism Education Association educator, Porterfield received JEA’s Rising Star award at its national conference in Philadelphia in 2024. An active member of Press Pass NYC, a non-profit that supports high school journalism, she has spoken at local and national conferences and serves as a mentor to new advisors.
Before stepping into the classroom, Porterfield worked as an award-winning writer and editor at daily newspapers in Georgia, Florida and New York. During her time as a journalist, she also wrote a nationally distributed column that focused on technology and trends and wrote three books providing career advice to young adults.
Porterfield’s own journey in journalism began at the University of Georgia. She went on to earn a Master of Science in Urban Education from Mercy College in the Bronx.
In addition to advising the school newspaper, Porterfield co-teaches social studies, oversees the special education department and serves as a model teacher. With support from the Manhattan Theatre Club, she organizes outings where students participate in interactive workshops and then see the related theatrical production. She also has conducted communications training for executive MBA students at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
She resides in Rye, NY, with her husband, Jeff Mangum.
The award is named in honor of the late Robert Greenman, a journalism educator, author, and long-time board member of the Deadline Club, who died in 2018. Greenman’s importance in journalism education cannot be overstated. He wrote “The Adviser’s Companion,” the seminal guide for high school journalism teachers, and played a key role in the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. He inspired thousands of student journalists through his engaging, insightful and witty workshops.
Porterfield is the 20th recipient of this annual recognition, which Greenman launched 20 years ago. See the full list of honorees.
