UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A Penn State faculty member who previously served as a senior editor and newsroom manager during a four-decade career at several major daily news organizations was named as the recipient of the 2024 Richard J. Levine Journalism Champion Award, presented by the Dow Jones News Fund.
Walter Middlebrook, the Foster Professor of Practice in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, was selected for the award that was established in 2022 to honor those whose work supports the perpetuation of a strong and diverse free press. The award also pays tribute to the late News Fund president and longtime Dow Jones news executive Richard J. Levine and his contributions to journalism.
Levine, who died in March 2022, was a steadfast champion of the important role of a free press in society, having spent his entire career as a reporter, editor and manager at The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones. The recipient of the annual award is selected from a group of nominees by a committee of News Fund staff and board members.
Middlebrook, a former assistant managing editor at The Detroit News, led an award-winning metro news desk and investigations team before joining the Penn State faculty in fall 2020. He was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in April 2023.
His career includes editing and writing positions at The New York Times, Newsday/New York Newsday, USA Today, the Minneapolis Star and the St. Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press. He was among the staff at Newsday that won a Pulitzer Prize for spot news in 1992 for its coverage of a deadly subway crash in Manhattan.
Training the next generation of journalists has been an integral part of Middlebrook’s work. He is former director of Times Mirror’s two-year METPRO/Editing program that identified and trained minority candidates as copy editors. Middlebrook also taught at Michigan State and Hofstra universities and at the Maynard Institute Editing Program for Minority Journalists.
In 2018 the Detroit Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) presented Middlebrook a Lifetime Achievement Award. He currently serves as treasurer of Detroit SPJ and vice president of the Rosa Parks Scholarship Foundation board of directors. He also sits on the boards of the Fair Media Council of Long Island, the Maryland/Delaware/DC Press Foundation, the Daily Collegian at Penn State and the Board of Student Publications at the University of Michigan.
Middlebrook is a lifetime member of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and serves as a coach and mentor for the Detroit Writing Room. He recently helped Penn State students revive the on-campus chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.
A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Middlebrook is a graduate of Boston University.
The Dow Jones News Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes careers in journalism with the vision of establishing a robust news media staffed by well-trained, innovative journalists who reflect America’s diversity and are dedicated to a free, strong and fair press. The News Fund is supported by Dow Jones & Company, Dow Jones Foundation, media companies and private donations.