Three members of Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication have received national honors recognizing their contributions to journalism, media history and research on women in communication.
Journalism professors Linn Washington Jr. and David T. Z. Mindich and Media and Communication doctoral student Yelena Dzhanova will be honored in connection with the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s 109th annual conference, scheduled for Aug. 5–8 in New Orleans.
Washington has been selected to receive the 2026 Gene Burd Award for Excellence in Urban Journalism. Presented jointly by AEJMC and the Urban Communication Foundation, the award recognizes a distinguished body of work in urban journalism, including reporting, analysis and research addressing the problems, policies and priorities that shape city life.
An award-winning investigative journalist and Temple alumnus, Washington, KLN ’74, retired from Klein College in spring 2026 after a career spanning daily, alternative and ethnic newspapers and decades of teaching at Temple. He has reported from four continents, frequently examining social justice, racial inequity, law and the news media.
“It's been a privilege to service communities and classrooms through journalism. I am grateful that my works are deemed worthy of this recognition,” Washington said.
During his time at Temple, Washington taught investigative reporting, journalism law, multimedia reporting and news writing. He co-created the Journalism Department’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab and helped lead PhiladelphiaNeighborhoods.com, where student work earned dozens of regional and national journalism awards.
Washington’s award will be presented Aug. 6 during an AEJMC panel devoted to excellence in urban journalism and urban journalism research.
Mindich, a professor of journalism, has been named the 2026 recipient of the Donald L. Shaw Senior Scholar Award from AEJMC’s History Division. Established in 2020, the award recognizes a scholar who has made distinguished contributions to the study of media history and demonstrated sustained involvement in the division.
A media historian and public intellectual, Mindich studies journalism ethics, media history and the role of news in a democracy. His books include Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define American Journalism, Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don’t Follow the News and The Mediated World: A New Approach to Mass Communication and Culture.
The award committee cited the lasting influence of Mindich’s scholarship, particularly his examination of journalistic objectivity and his early research into news avoidance and news literacy. Committee members also recognized his professional service and mentorship of emerging scholars.
“I am deeply honored to receive this award, especially from a division made up of so many extraordinary scholars whose research has so deeply informed and enabled my own,” Mindich said in the History Division’s award announcement.
Mindich is a former head of the AEJMC History Division and has organized or moderated a journalism history panel at the association’s annual conference every year since 1995. He will be recognized during the History Division’s program at the New Orleans conference.
Dzhanova received the Mary Gardner Award for Graduate Student Research from AEJMC’s Commission on the Status of Women for her project, “Natural but Not Neutral: Seventy Years of Breastfeeding Coverage in The New York Times.”
“I was really excited to learn that I had received this award—and for a project I first began thinking about as a master’s student in gender studies at the CUNY Graduate Center,” Dzhanova said. “The award bears my name, but so many people helped me along the way.”
The award recognizes graduate research with the potential to make a significant contribution to scholarship about women in journalism and mass communication. It is named for Mary Gardner, a Michigan State University professor emerita who was the first woman elected president of AEJMC.
A doctoral student in Temple’s Media and Communication program, Dzhanova is a mixed-methods researcher who studies gender and identity in journalism practice, history and ethics, as well as gendered news coverage.
Her previous scholarship has explored how journalism training can be combined with social science education to help future reporters cover LGBTQIA+ communities accurately and ethically. In addition to pursuing her doctorate, Dzhanova is an experienced journalist and editorial strategist and teaches journalism at Pace University.
The three honors reflect the breadth of journalism scholarship and practice across Klein College—from Washington’s urban and investigative reporting, to Mindich’s influential work in media history, to Dzhanova’semerging research on gender and journalism.