2024 Nominees for Journalism & Media

NATE CHINEN
b. 1976 and writing about jazz since 1996, is currently editorial director of WRTI (Philadelphia) and formerly director of editorial content at WBGO (Newark), also reporting on NPR. Active on social media and with a Substack titled The Gig (based on his longtime column at the former JazzTimes), Nate is the author of Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century, and co-authored George Wein’s autobiography Myself Among Others: A Life in Music. He’s been a critic at the New York Times, the Village Voice and Philadelphia City Paper, published in national magazines. and has won the JJA’s Helen Oakley Dance – Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in Writing 13 times.

WILL FRIEDWALD
b. 1961, is the author and has written music criticism for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Village Voice, Newsday, New York Observer, New York Sun, and magazines ranging from Entertainment Weekly to the Oxford America. He’s the author of Straighten Up and Fly RIght: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole; Sinatra: The Song is You – A Singer’s Art; Jazz Singing: America’s Great Voices from Bessie Smith to Bebop and Beyond; Stardust Melodies – The Biography of Twelve of America’s Most Popular Songs; Tony Bennett: The Good Life; Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies; A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers; and The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums; his writing appear in collaborative volumes and anthologies, too. He is an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award recipient, among other honors. Will curates a video and sometimes live production entitled “Clip Joint,” and is an active researcher. He has written over 600 liner notes for compact discs, received 11 Grammy nominations, and appears frequently on television and film documentaries. He is also a consultant and curator for Apple Music.

ROBIN D. G. KELLEY
b. 1962, is the author of the JJA Book of the Year Award winningThelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press, 2009), and currently Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), having charted a distinguished academic career. Self-described as a “Marxist surrealist feminist,” he’s also written Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (2012) and published prolifically both in academic journals and the popular press *including the New York Times and Village Voice).

JOHN LITWEILER
b. 1940, is a Chicago-based writer, who has documented the music of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians since its start, writing for DownBeat, the Chicago Sun-Times and Reader, Coda and other publications. He hosts a radio program on WHPK; his books are The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 18958 and Ornette Coleman: A Harmolodic Life as well as the novels Mojo Snake Minuet and Sundidos.