SoCJ’s Baxter shortlisted for national UK press award

Photo Credit Jez Coulson / Insight

Sarah Baxter, director of the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting, has been shortlisted for a national journalism award in her native United Kingdom.

Baxter is one of six people on the shortlistfor a Media Freedom Award in the category of Commentator of the Year - Popular, for her weekly column about American politics in the London Standard.

In this year's hotly contested presidential election, Baxter "has become a must-read in the run-up to the U.S. election and her knowledge, clarity and freshness of writing have won her a transatlantic audience," according to The Standard.

"Sarah's extraordinary ability to get and tell vitally important stories is matched only by her deep compassion and empathy for those whose stories she tells," said Laura Lindenfeld, dean of the School of Communication and Journalism and executive director of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. "Her ability to get beyond her own opinions and record and share accurately the perspectives of others inspires her students and her readers alike. We are so lucky to have her."

Baxter has directed the Colvin Center and been a visiting professor of international journalism at Stony Brook since 2022. The Colvin Center educates and prepares students to become international journalists and honors the life and legacy of Marie Colvin, an international war correspondent who was killed by Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria in 2012.

Baxter has covered American politics for more than 20 years, including the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, several presidential elections, the 50th anniversary of Emmett Till's murder and the current presidential campaign. From her American home, she has also covered the Canadian residential schools and the discovery of mass graves and Greece's fight for the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum, a story that earned her a Gold Cross Order of Beneficencefrom the Greek government.

The Media Freedom Awards celebrate "excellence in public interest and campaigning journalism across the breadth of the UK news media industry." They are given by the Society of Editors, which represents 400 national, regional and local publications in the UK. The organization works to protect the freedom of the press and to recognize those who fight for democracy and free speech.

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