2025 Nominees for Journalism & Media

The Gig,by Nate Chinen

Jazz Wax by Marc Myers

Playback  by Lewis Porter

Transitional Technology/Do The Math by Ethan Iverson

Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday’s Last Year , Paul Alexander (Penguin Random House)

Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Leadbelly’s Truths from Jim Crow’s Lies, by Sheila Curran Bernard (Cambridge University Press)

In the Brewing Luminous: The Life and Music of Cecil Taylor, by Philip Freeman (Wolke Verlag)

Jazz Revolutionary: The Life and Music of Eric Dolphy, by Jonathan Grasse (Jawbone Press)

Focus on Women in Jazz, by Guy Fonke (Editions Schortgen)

In with the In Crowd: Popular Jazz in 1960s Black America, by Mike Smith (University Press of Mississippi)

Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories, by Elijah Wald (Hatchette Books)

Playing the Changes: Jazz at an African University and On the Road, by Darius and Catherine Brubeck (University of Illinois Press)

Ted Gioia is the force behind The Honest Broker, an exhaustive, expansive daily blog on Substack. He is also the author of 12 books on the histories, origins and functions of jazz, blues, love songs, work songs and standards. A serious researcher and collector, he was president and editor of late, lamented Jazz.com, helped found Stanford University’s jazz studies program, has worked as a jazz pianist and Silicon Valley business consultant.

MICHAEL JACKSON, JackoJazz, is a multi-disciplinarian — writer, photographer, printmaker, saxophonist, event instigator and story-teller — based in Chicago. He writes often for DownBeat, with his own photos illustrating and placed on covers, sometimes the Chicago Sun-Times, and elsewhere — working while traveling to his native England, NYC, Panama, Japan and beyond.

BILL MILKOWSKI, now living near Hartford, CT, is a veteran freelance jazz journalist, articles writer and author, who reports he had a banner year in 2024, publishing in diverse periodicals including DownBeat and posting Musings on Music by the Milkman at Substack. His seven books include bios of Michael Brecker and Jaco Pastorius, collaborations with Pat Martino and Keith Richards, and a history of “jive,” but he believes the Palmer-Dance Award be given for writings in journalistic periodicals.

GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO is a New York Times reporter who has contributed frequently to the newspaper’s “Five Minutes to Make You Love . . ” column, as well as obituaries, reviews and interpretive profiles. He has contributed to DownBeat and other jazz monthlies. He was a co-founder and editor-in-chief of Capital Bop, Washington D.C.’s blog-calendar-event-info site, and teaches writing as an adjunct at New York University.GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

HANK SHTEAMER has written about music professionally for more than 20 years, including stints as an editor at Time Out New York and Rolling Stone. He currently contributes to The New York Times, Pitchfork, Tidal and blogs at Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches.

JOSEF WOODARD is a career-long journalist and critic, covering jazz and pop from his home in Santa Barbara, CA. His work has been published in DownBeat, JazzTimes, JazzIz, Rolling Stone, Jazz Hot, Opera Now, Scene, San Francisco Classical Voice, the Santa Barbara Independent, All About Jazz and so on: a sample of 2024 clips regarding fests is here. His books are Charles Lloyd: A Wild, Blatant Truth (2015), Conversations with Charlie Haden (2017), and Ladies Who Lunch 2024), a satire. He’s also a musician, releasing productions on Household Ink Records.

All That’s Jazz, by Allen Scott

The Buzz: The JJA Podcast

The Third Story with Leo Sidran

Matt Fleeger is the long-time program director of KMHD, Portland and host of weekday program “New Jazz for Lunch,” having started in broadcasting at age 18. Prior to arriving in Portland, he worked in radio in Pittsburgh and San Antonio.

Dick Golden, host of “American Jazz” on SiriusXM, started broadcasting in the 1960s as a teenager on a Portsmouth, NH station, and has spun the American songbook ever since — on WQRC from Cape Cod for 27 years — speaking from a rare depth of knowledge of and experience with the great singers.

Arturo Gomez was music director of KUVO, Denver, for 24 years, and was named its “Cultural Ambassador” in September 2024. He hosts the shows Tune in to Lunchtime! weekdays at noon, and Salsa con Jazz, on Sunday afternoons.

David Kunian hosts long-running The Freakologist Lunatique Show on New Orleans’ WWOZ. He’s also the New Orleans Jazz Museum Music curator, and New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival stage interviewer and a freelance journalist.

Leslie Keros hosts jazz and blues shows on WDCB, Chicago, also producing reports for its program The Arts Section. Having worked as a book editor, she began broadcasting around her native Detroit area in 2000, and joined ‘DCB in 2010.