Nancy M. Preyer-Johnson

Recipient of the STAR OPINION WRITER OF THE YEAR award in The Charles E. Green Awards (2023)

Nancy M. Preyer-Johnson
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

Judge’s Comments:

In the highly competitive category of opinion writing, Nancy M. Preyer-Johnson of the San Antonio Express-News is first among equals. Her body of columns and editorials addressed an impressive range of issues from school vouchers to immigration to guns and school safety. She provided deft analysis on the impact of Gov. Greg Abbott’s relentless push of school vouchers on poor schools and school funding. From Uvalde, she profiled a teacher whose 11 students were all killed in the May 24, 2023 mass shooting and produced an editorial about the state’s response, ultimately ineffective because the safe schools legislation is accompanied by little money. From New York City, she tracked the Texas migrants bused to the city by Gov. Abbott, writing that the popular political move — in Texas, at least — masks a growing weariness among Americans toward newcomers and the country’s broken immigration system. In these pieces and in other writing, Ms. Preyer-Johnson brings deft analysis to complex and fluid issues, explaining with data and context and, most importantly, describing the impact of events and laws on the lives of people. Her body of work illustrates the continued importance of editorial and opinion writing; in her hands, the complex becomes accessible.

Bill Celis
Journalist, educator and author

Judge’s Bio:
Bill Celis is a journalist, educator and author. For 20 years he worked at leading Texas and U.S. dailies. He is a former national correspondent for the New York Times and a former reporter and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He also worked for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as a general assignments reporter and for the El Paso Times State staff.

For 25 years he served as a professor of journalism, first at the University of Colorado at Boulder and at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where over 21 years he earned tenure and served as associate director, program director and associate dean responsible for undergraduate and graduate curriculum, assessment, recruitment, diversity in the classroom and the recruitment of diverse students, staff and faculty.    

In 2010 he led the school-wide committee that produced the first diversity audit of any USC school, winning the 2012 Diversity and Equity Award from the Association of Educators of Mass Communication and Journalism.

Among other teaching awards he won the 2018 Barry Bingham Fellowship, awarded annually to journalism educators for their work in diversity.

He is the author of, "Battle Rock: A One-Room School in America's Vanishing West" (Public Affairs, 2003), and is working on another book about disenfranchised children.

He earned his undergraduate degree in 1978 in journalism at Howard Payne University (Brownwood, Texas) and a master's degree in 1982 from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.  He lives in San Antonio, his hometown.

To see photos from Nancy M. Preyer-Johnson’s prize-winning commentary, please click the links below:

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