Davis named Journalism Educator of the Year by NABJ

Bonnie Newman Davis, a journalism professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and a member of the SPJ Virginia Pro chapter’s board, was selected as “Journalism Educator of the Year” by the National Association of Black Journalists at its spring board meeting.

She will be honored at the NABJ Annual Convention in Philadelphia in August.

Davis, right, served for several years as academic director of the VCU Urban Journalism Workshop, an intense two-week journalism program for high school students that is co-sponsored by the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, Inc.

She is faculty adviser for the VCU student SPJ chapter and as an informal adviser to VCU’s student chapter of NABJ. She is a co-founder of the former Richmond Association of Black Journalists, which won NABJ’s Chapter of the Year in 1998. From 1999-2003, Davis served on NABJ’s national board as the mid-Atlantic regional director.

In addition to her longtime affiliation with NABJ, Davis is also a member of the Diversity Committee for SPJ national.

Davis said, “I pay homage to the many educators and journalists who have served as my coaches, confidantes and mentors, particularly Mrs. Loreno Marrow, my first journalism professor at N.C. A&T State University, and to my late husband, William H. Davis, a lifelong educator who instilled in me the confidence to step into a college classroom in 1994. I also thank the hundreds of students whom I have had the privilege of mentoring and teaching at several colleges and universities in Virginia.”

Charles Robinson, NABJ’s Region II director added his thoughts: “Bonnie Newman Davis has challenged her students to stay true to the principles of journalism while asking them to go beyond their comfort zone with new technology. Her classrooms are like newsrooms, there are no shortcuts.”