2003 SPECIAL HONORS RECIPIENT BIOGRAPHIES

ISAAC PETERSON III – EMERGING JOURNALIST

The new Emerging Journalist Award is given to a young African-American journalist for doing extraordinary work that has great significance to African Americans and the African diaspora. Isaac Peterson won the award in competition with Black journalists from mainstream daily newspapers across the U.S., as well as other weekly community newspapers. He is the first recipient of such an honor.

Peterson has written for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder for less than two years; his current staff position is his first as a professional journalist. He said, “I only started writing a few months before my first Spokesman-Recorder article,” a photo essay about a KKK rally at the state capitol. “I always tried to write from a different perspective than other writers. My writing was noticed right away, and I got much positive feedback from many countries around the world.”

Peterson was born in Rapid City, S.D., and was raised mostly in Cheyenne, Wyo., in an Air Force family. He attended the University of Wyoming with a major in communication and a psychology minor. He subsequently “worked a lot in corporate America, and hated almost all of it.” He has also instructed in relaxation and stress management, tutored, and played lead guitar in bands in the Twin Cities during the 1980s and ‘90s.

Peterson said he has no formal training in journalism or writing. “People tell me that’s an advantage rather than a liability. I do things the way I think they should be done, so if I break rules about how other people think things ‘should be done,’ I don’t even know I’m breaking them. I do try to be aware of ethical and legal concerns, but other than that, I just try to do journalism the way I wish more journalists would.

“My job,” he said, “is to take what I observe or am told about and write about it in a way that will be interesting for others.” According to Tracey Williams, president of the Spokesman-Recorder, therein lies Peterson’s unique talent.

“ Isaac is an unassuming journalist with an uncommonly sensitive ear for real news,” Williams said. “Most reporters don’t hear what he hears. He instinctively knows what questions will cut through the rhetoric and get to the truth, and then he reveals the essence of a situation to his readers. We are extremely delighted to have a writer of Isaac’s stature on our staff, representing the Black press here in Minnesota.”

NABJ cited Peterson’s 2002 stories on the Minneapolis Branch NAACP and 35W freeway access issues as contributing factors to its decision, but his letter to the selection committee no doubt also influenced them. In the letter he wrote, “I hope that my work will help inspire young African Americans to look around at their world and have the courage to ask questions about what they see. I hope that my work will enable the African-American community to make informed decisions about their futures and to understand the importance of education and the power of information and organizing.

“I would like to think that the nature of my work also will enable me to eventually work with emerging journalistic talent to help develop their skills and to nurture and support the next generation of budding journalists. The value of our profession is downplayed, and I want very much to help reestablish journalism in the minds of younger people as not just an honorable profession, but a necessary one for African Americans. We have as much talent and ability as the rest of society.”

Although Peterson said the ideal culmination of his career would be “to teach the next generation how to follow in our footsteps,” he also expects to cover many more news stories in the years to come. “I just plan to do what I’ve been doing the past year. The best is yet to come, and this award is just the first. There are a lot of stories not being told, and I think most of the ones that are told are not told correctly.”

He has spent much time covering events at the state capitol in greater depth than is typical for the community press, in effect serving as the African-American community’s journalistic eyes and ears at the legislature.

Peterson’s willingness to take risks and “call it as he sees it” has contributed to the power of his stories. “I did decide that if I was going to go down in flames as a writer, those flames would be bright, white-hot ones,” he said.

Back to Special Honors 2003 Winners list