A nationally prominent watchdog journalist and mentor has been chosen as the 22nd recipient of the Defense of the First Amendment Award. New York Times correspondent Ron Nixon was chosen by the faculty of the Department of Mass Communications at St. Cloud State as this year’s winner.

Nixon is currently a Washington correspondent for the Times and will accept the award on April 13th at the First Amendment Forum on the campus of SCSU. Nixon joined the Times in 2005 and has written or co-written investigations into the Small Business Administration, congressional earmarks and companies doing business in Iran, which violates U.S. sanctions.

Before joining the Times, he worked for the Minneapolis Star Tribune on the paper’s investigative team. Nixon is originally from North Minneapolis. This year’s First Amendment Forum will focus on computer-assisted journalism. The event is titled “Ramped-Up Journalism: Computer-Assisted Reporting for a New Generation”.

The award honors people with Minnesota connections who have shown a “staunch defense of the First Amendment and its ideals”. The First Amendment Forum is sponsored by the SCSU chapter of Society of Professional Journalists and the SCSU Department of Mass Communications.