NLGJA Receives $100,000 from CNN

WASHINGTON (U.S. Newswire) -- The National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) received a $100,000 donation from CNN to the NLGJA Scholarship Fund endowment to support the Leroy F. Aarons Scholarship Award. The academic award is named in the memory of NLGJA's founder, the late Leroy F. Aarons, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and editor.

Pamela Strother, NLGJA Executive Director, said "This unprecedented gift from CNN is a milestone for NLGJA as the largest single gift from a news media company to the organization. CNN has ensured that the Aarons Award will be fully funded and has provided a solid base to our endowment to allow us to grow our awards program to help even more deserving journalism students."

"CNN is only as strong as its journalists and this donation helps ensure that we not only support an outstanding organization of journalists but a deep resource for hiring future CNN anchors, correspondents and producers," said Jim Walton, pesident, CNN Worldwide.

The $5,000 Aarons scholarship will be awarded annually to an LGBT undergraduate or graduate student who plans a career in journalism and is committed to furthering NLGJA's mission of fair and accurate coverage of the LGBT community.

Eric Hegedus, pesident of NLGJA, said, "We are deeply grateful to CNN for sustaining Roy's commitment to the profession he loved. His aims for NLGJA have always insisted on the highest possible journalism standards, and with this endowment, his work lives on through the next generations of promising young students."

Leroy F. Aarons dedicated his life to journalism until his death at age 70 in 2004. He believed that the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community could advance if the news media did its job by simply telling the truth. Aarons knew that coverage of the LGBT community, as well as that of other minorities, requires increasing sophistication and training for journalists. He realized early that improving coverage had to start in the training camps for young journalists -- the journalism schools at the nation's colleges and universities.

In 2005, NLGJA's 15th anniversary year, the Leroy F. Aarons Scholarship Award was established to honor Aarons' memory and to continue the work he began when he founded NLGJA.

NLGJA partnered with The Philadelphia Foundation (TPF), a community foundation established in 1918, to administer the NLGJA Scholarship Fund. The Delaware Valley Legacy Fund, a component fund of TPF serving to advance philanthropy within the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, will disburse the scholarship awards upon receiving recommendation from NLGJA during each award period.

The deadline to apply for the Leroy F. Aarons Scholarship Award is February 1. Information and application may be found on the NLGJA website at http://nlgja.org/students/student_index.html. The first Aarons Award recipient will be announced March 16 in New York at NLGJA's 11th Annual New York Benefit reception and dinner to be held at the West Side Loft, 336 West 37th Street, 6:30 p.m.