JAWS is excited to announce two of our keynote speakers for JAWS CAMP 2022 Sept. 9-11 in Austin, Texas! Register here for the 2022 Conference And Mentoring Program where we will focus on Truth. Justice. Community. Lulu Garcia-Navarro – a two-time Peabody Award-winning journalist – is our Saturday evening keynote speaker. Sunday afternoon, Karen Attiah will close the conference. She is an Opinions columnist for the Washington Post where her writing focuses on race, gender, culture, human rights and international affairs.

On June 2, JAWS President Jenn Kho was named executive editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, the first woman and person of color to hold the position in the newspaper’s 178-year history. Jenn is the former managing editor of HuffPost and Guardian US, and a digital media consultant. She’ll be leading the Sun-Times at a pivotal moment for the daily newspaper, which recently transitioned to nonprofit ownership.

The wait is over! You can register now for the first JAWS CAMP (Conference And Mentoring Program) in person since 2019. The theme this year is JAWS Reunited. Truth. Justice. Community. JAWS CAMP 2022 is Sept. 9-11 in Austin, Texas. You can register, book your hotel room and keep up with all things CAMP. Early-bird pricing ends July 31. We'll be staying at the beautiful Lakeway Resort and Spa with special rates for CAMP attendees.

Join JAWS' and Los Angeles Times Houston Bureau Chief Molly Hennessy-Fiske as she talks with Melissa del Bosque, Emmy and National Magazine Award-winning journalist and author of Bloodlines – The True Story of a Drug Cartel, the FBI, and the Battle for a Horse-Racing Dynasty, in which she follows a harrowing attempt to dismantle a cartel leader’s American racing dynasty built on extortion and blood money. 

Got an idea for the next great media outlet? Not sure how to develop it in the ever-changing journalism landscape? Join JAWS and NLGJA: the Association of LGBTQ Journalists on May 4 from 7 to 8 p.m. ET. During this webinar, you’ll hear from Karen Hawkins, co-publisher and co-editor-in-chief of the Chicago Reader, and Tammye Nash, managing editor of the Dallas Voice.

Meet four women who are organizing newsrooms and freelancers. Why? What are the outcomes, the stakes, the implications, not only for our industry but the communities we serve? How can you get involved?

Join this week’s JAWS webinar – 7 p.m. ET, Thursday, March 24 – as we talk to Molly O’Toole, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter based in Washington, D.C., currently working on her book, “The Route,” a narrative of the new migrant underground, a deadly gauntlet for refugees from around the world that stretches from Brazil to the U.S.-Mexico border. The book is to be published by Crown, a division of Random House.

I’m honored and excited to take on the permanent role of the Journalism & Women Symposium’s executive director. This incredible opportunity marks the beginning of a new chapter for the organization, whose mission is to advance women in journalism and advocate for more inclusive coverage of the diverse experiences and cultures that comprise our society.

Join us TOMORROW, Feb. 23 at 7 p.m. ET. as we talk with Jhmira Alexander, president and exec director of Public Narrative and incoming vice president of JAWS. Driven by a mission to "shore up our country’s democratic underpinnings," Public Narrative has for 25 years worked with journalists to tell more inclusive stories that reflect diverse human experiences. Join us to discuss how Public Narrative has evolved to serve multi platform media and how news organizations can be more responsive to and more engaged with audiences.

JAWS is, and always has been, member-driven. That means our ambitious plans can’t happen without your unique skills, talents and perspectives. Please consider joining a committee or task force this year to advance the professional empowerment and personal growth of women in journalism and advocate for more inclusive coverage of the diverse experiences and cultures that comprise our society.

“Happy New Year, JAWdesses! I’m so excited to kick of 2022 at JAWS. Over the holidays, as I reflected on what I’m grateful for, and read the love letters to JAWS from Dawn Garcia and Georgia Dawkins, I was overwhelmed with gratitude that I get to be in community with so many amazing people at JAWS who are working to bring meaningful …”

JAWS helped me tell the truth — and changed my life. In 2014, as a JAWS fellow, I fell in love with CAMP — and with the validation, compassion, and acceptance that I felt all around me. This incredibly diverse group of women in different career phases and stages of life made me feel more like myself. I’d found a home, a place to grow with grace. That intensified at CAMP in 2015, when in Jill Geisler’s diversity breakout sessions, my table talked about feeling ‘other’ in our newsrooms. It can feel so lonely in your newsroom – until you can share and hear others’ struggles too. I felt like, WHOA, I’m not crazy? How sad that we all feel othered, separately!

I first learned about JAWS as I was joining a newsroom that did not welcome the new Latina editor – me – hired instead of the guys they knew. It was my first official leadership role in a newsroom, and it was lonely. At my first JAWS CAMP, I learned from wise and witty women who had been newsroom leaders before me. They gave me strategies, suggestions – and raucous laughter, when that’s what I needed. I felt like I was home.

Despite all that we faced, we loved this organization enough to fight with and for each other, to cry together, and to hold ourselves accountable for JAWS’ survival. Even in our moment of distress, we tested whether we could become the ambitious, tolerant and inclusive organization we sought to be. To do that, we did what so many women in history fighting for a cause have always done: we trusted the brilliance and ingenuity of women.

Alessandra Galloni, appointed in April 2021 as Reuters’ first female editor-in-chief in the news agency’s 170-year history, said she got some great workplace advice years ago when she had her first child: Return to a bigger job. She took that advice, and it paid off with a progression of increasingly important roles at The Wall Street Journal and Reuters over the past two decades.

Hi, I’m Jenn Kho, the incoming president of JAWS. I want to tell you about something I’m really looking forward to: CAMP. If you’re wondering, that stands for the Conference and Mentoring Project, but it’s more than just a fun name.

Please join us again to explore more ways for women journalists to remain resilient and successful as the media industry changes. In this webinar, Theola DeBose will help you dig deep to uncover the skills women journalists take for granted and learn how to use those talents to transition into new careers or move into leadership roles.

Where were you on that Tuesday 20 years ago? I was a teenager living in my parent’s house in Saudi Arabia. I remember the sound of the hair dryer as I tried to plead with my mother, drying her wet hair, to allow me to go to a party. My younger brother came in and I snapped at him to “wait your turn to speak to Mom!” He calmly said that they interrupted the cartoons for some big breaking news. The blow-dryer stopped and we all stood in front of the television. We watched the second plane fly into the building, live. We were all standing in silence.

At JAWS CAMP 2021, you can expect to find inspiring speakers; educational opportunities for whatever stage of your career; networking and social time for having meaningful conversations, laughing, making friends and experiencing the importance of what we all do as journalists, as women and as human beings. Our fabulous keynote speakers include Deborah Douglas and Amber Payne, co-editors-in-chief of The Emancipator, which reimagines an abolitionist news outlet for a new day, and Melody Spann Cooper, chairman and CEO of Chicago's Midway Broadcasting Corporation, owner of the oldest Black-oriented radio station in the city.

Women journalists who work in small markets providing local news and/or who cover underrepresented communities may apply for a full-registration stipend to participate in the Conference And Mentoring Program (CAMP) happening Oct. 15-17 online and one demand. The stipends, which honor the work of pioneering Black journalist Alice Allison Dunnigan, are available for women not currently JAWS members but who are interested in the organization’s unique professional development, networking, and inspirational opportunities.