View
Donna Ladd
Editor-in-chief, Co-Founder, Jackson Free Press
Race/Gender Diversity Consultant
Non-fiction Writing Coach/Lecturer
Donna’s Journalist Facebook Page
Donna Ladd’s blog
Ladd’s Diversity Blog
Follow Ladd on Twitter @donnerkay, @altdiversity, @shutupandwrite and @jxnfreepress
Contact: ladd@jacksonfreepress.com, 601.362.6121 ext. 15
Books that discuss Ladd’s work
• The Past Is Never Dead: The Trial of James Ford Seale and Mississippi’s Struggle for Redemption (Harry Maclean, Perseus Books, 2009)
• Devil’s Sanctuary: An Eyewitness History of Mississippi Hate Crimes (James Dickerson, Alex Alston, 2009)
• Blue Dixie (Bob Moser, 2008)
• First Place Feature Story, “We Are Family: A Klan Child Fans a Different Flame” reprinted in “Best AltWeekly Writing and Design 2008”
• First Place Public Service Award pieces about bringing former Klansman James Ford Seale to trial reprinted in “Best AltWeekly Writing and Design 2008”
• First Place Feature Story, “Alleged Victims,” reprinted in “Best AltWeekly Writing and Design 2005 (AAN Press).
Awards
2011 Fannie Lou Hamer Humanitarian Award
2009 Center for Violence Prevention Angel Award (Domestic Abuse)
2009 Dress for Success Women of Strength Award
2009 Mississippi Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities Award (with staff)
Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshades Awards (Southeastern United States):
2011 Serious Commentary, 1st Place (Collection)
2011 Courts and the Law Reporting, 1st Place, “Rush to Judgment: Trying Kids As Adults” (with Valerie Wells)
2010 Serious Commentary, 1st Place, (Melton columns)
2010 Courts and the Law Reporting, 1st Place, Melton trial (with team)
2010 Public Service, 2nd Place, “Two Lakes” (with staff)
Association of Alternative Newsweeklies:
2011 Feature Writing, 2nd Place, “Rush to Judgment: Trying Kids As Adults” (with Valerie Wells)
2011 Columns, Honorable Mention
2011 Public Service, Honorable Mention, Domestic Abuse coverage (with Ronni Mott + staff)
2010 Public Service, 2nd Place, “Two Lakes” coverage (with staff)
2008 Feature Story, 1st Place, “We Are Family: Klan Child Shirley Beach”
2008 Public Service, 1st Place, “Road to Meadville”: Henry Dee-Charles Moore Murders (with team)
2007 Investigative Reporting, 2nd Place, Frank Melton Investigation (with team)
2006 Column-Political, 2nd Place
2006 Investigative Reporting, 2nd Place, Henry Dee-Charles Moore Murder Investigation
2005 Feature Story, 1st Place, “Alleged Victims” (Priest Abuse of Children)
2004 Columns, 3rd Place
2004 Music Criticism, 2nd Place
Articles & Other Media About Ladd’s Work
• Donna Ladd interviewed on CNN’s Paula Zahn Show
• Freedom of Expression (Next American City, 2008)
• A Mississippi Editor Responds (National Public Radio, 2008)
• Digging Deep In Mississippi (Utne Reader, Sept.-Oct. 2008)
• National Media Coverage of Ladd & JFP’s Investigation of Klan Murders of Dee-Moore
Ladd’s Biography
Donna Ladd is the editor-in-chief and the co-founder of the Jackson Free Press, Mississippi’s only progressive newspaper (in print weekly and daily online). Ladd is a Philadelphia, Miss., native who started two newspapers in Manhattan, then helped launch the first alternative newspaper in Colorado Springs. She returned home to Mississippi after 18 years and helped start the state’s only alternative newspaper and member of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. She has written for many magazines, Web sites and alternative newspapers, including the Village Voice in New York.
Ladd received her B.A. in political science from Mississippi State University in 1983, where she was a John C. Stennis scholar in political science. She was one of the first members of her family to attend college and the first to earn a master�s degree, in 2001 from Columbia University, where she studied journalism with a social justice focus. Over two years, she studied in the Columbia Law School, Teacher’s College and the Institute for African American Studies, in addition to the journalism school, where she was a teaching assistant for Professor LynNell Hancock, a specialist in journalism about children. In June 2001, Ladd was awarded a six-month Packard Future of Children Fellowship through the University of Maryland School of Journalism to study the discriminatory effects of school discipline.
Since the Jackson Free Press launched in 2002, Ladd has won 12 national writing awards from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies for feature writing, investigative reporting, columns, political columns and music criticism.
In 2005, Ladd led a team of young native Mississippians to both cover and blog about the Edgar Ray Killen trial and, working with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. to revisit the 1964 Klan murders of Charles Moore and Henry Dee. Ladd’s story about the Dee-Moore case led to a series of national stories on the case and helped move the cold case to a national stage and bring James Ford Seale to justice. She reported for the first time that Seale, the primary suspect in the case, was not dead as had been erroneously reported by The Clarion-Ledger and other media.
In 2005, Ladd was named one of Mississippi’s 50 Leading Businesswomen by the Mississippi Business Journal, and she is the recipient of the 2006 Friendship Award, along with Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson, from Jackson 2000, a racial-reconciliation organization. Her work on race and youth issues has been featured in many publications, from Glamour magazine to a CQ Press textbook on juvenile justice. In 2006, she was elected to the national board of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies and was named Diversity Chair in 2007. Until recently, she wa on the state board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, serving as vice president. In 2006, she was appointed to the Jackson State University Mass Communications Advisory Board. She has been an adviser to The Hoofbeat newspaper at Murrah High School in Jackson, and led a diversity workshop for Youth Leadership Jackson in 2007. She also teaches writing workshops at the Academy for Alternative Journalism at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Chicago. She conceived and helped start the Jackson Area High School Press Association, as well as the Youth Media Project and the Jackson Think Tank.
Ladd is very active in the Jackson community and hosts regular social gatherings of The Lounge, a salon for Jackson creatives and progressive thinkers. She regularly speaks about community and journalism to schools, nonprofits, and to local and national media. She teaches a weekly seminar in creative non-fiction writing, Shut Up and Write, and does consulting in race/gender diversity for media outlets and business organizations around the country.
She lives in Jackson with her long-time partner Todd Stauffer, the publisher and co-owner of the Jackson Free Press, a technology/Web consultant, and the author of dozens of books on technology, the Internet and blogging.
<< Back to Jackson Free Press.
<< Back to Media.
