The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY is pleased to announce the winners of the 2026 Alumni Awards for Excellence. This year’s award presentations are part of Newmark J-School’s 20th anniversary celebration, marking two decades as a force for good in journalism.
“These alumni reflect the very best of what we strive to cultivate at Newmark — rigor, courage, and a deep commitment to the public,” said Dean Graciela Mochkofsky. “In our 20th anniversary year, we’re delighted to celebrate their individual accomplishments and the ways they embody journalism rooted in truth, accountability, and public service in a rapidly changing world.”
The 2026 honorees are:
- Kennedy Sessions (‘25) is the recipient of the Sidney Hillman Award for Social Justice Reporting. Sessions is a data reporting fellow at THE CITY, where she works on data-related projects covering the city jail system, transportation, housing, and immigration. Previously, Sessions worked with Documented as a Revson Data Fellow, where she uncovered companies that had joint contracts with ICE and New York City. In 2025, she also interned at the Kansas City Star as an Ida B. Wells investigative Reporting Fellow, where she reported on settlements paid out by the Kansas City Police Department. Before joining Newmark J-School, she was a reporter in her hometown of Houston, where she closely followed local city politics, education, and culture for Chron.com.
- Cherry Salazar (‘25) is the recipient of the Frederic Wiegold Prize for Business Journalism. An investigative reporter from Manila, Salazar is currently a data journalist at Big Local News at Stanford University, where she processes and analyzes data to help newsrooms and local reporters produce impactful reporting. Her previous reporting on public contracts and conflicts of interest led her to Newmark J-School to gain deeper insights into markets and the economy.
- Nicol León Arge (‘25) is the recipient of the Newsweek Alumni Prize. León Arge is a bilingual reporter who has reported for Gothamist/WNYC, where she helped break a story on eviction notices at a migrant shelter. She previously contributed to The Arizona Republic, where she covered barriers to legal representation for unaccompanied minors and policy changes affecting asylum seekers. She was selected to report from El Paso for the Puente News Collaborative, where she covered federal barriers to family reunification for immigrant children. Her work has also been published in Documented NY, El País US/América, Palabra NAHJ, among others. Before attending Newmark J-School, León Arge worked in newsrooms in her hometown of Lima, Peru, covering social issues and local accountability.
- Vanessa Swales (‘18) is the recipient of the Stephen B. Shepard Prize for Investigative Reporting. Swales is a reporter at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where she has covered Milwaukee County politics and incarceration since 2021. Her reporting on the state prison system and in-custody deaths led to the arrest and charging of nine correctional staff, including a prison warden. Her work on mental health care for incarcerated people also prompted policy changes limiting the use of solitary confinement for those with serious mental illness.Swales’ work has earned top honors from organizations from the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, the Milwaukee Press Club, the New York Press Club, the Edward R. Murrow Awards, and the Headliner Awards. Previously, Swales worked for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, The New York Times, NBC News, and Reveal.
- José J. Nieves (Executive Program ‘23) is the recipient of the Vivek Shah Executive Leadership Alumni Award. Since 2017, Nieves has led elTOQUE.com, a transnational newsroom known for its innovative use of artificial intelligence and distributed data-gathering methods to monitor Cuba’s informal economy. Under his leadership, El Toque has become a primary reference for tracking Cuba’s informal currency market and combating disinformation. Nieves also serves as Executive Director of the Más Voces Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit organization that supports Cuba’s and Cuban American independent media and civic ecosystems. A Cuban journalist in exile since 2019, Nieves began his career in Cuban state media across radio, television, and print before joining the independent press in 2014.
About the Alumni Awards for Excellence: Established in 2008, the annual awards honor alumni and other members of the Newmark J-School community for their outstanding reporting and leadership across various categories. The Sidney Hillman Award recognizes reporting in service of the common good. The Frederic Wiegold Prize honors exceptional talent in business reporting. The Newsweek Alumni Prize highlights graduates who embody the values and spirit of Newsweek through their journalism. The Stephen B. Shepard Prize, named after Founding Dean Emeritus Stephen Shepard, honors exemplary investigative journalism that exposes injustice. The Vivek Shah Executive Leadership Alumni Award acknowledges an alumnus of the Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership who has demonstrated an outsized impact in their career, newsroom, and the news industry.
The ceremony will take place on Wednesday, September 30 as part of the 20th anniversary celebration, marking 20 years as a force for good.