For the past 75 years, the Virginia Press Association has honored the state’s best journalism through its award for “Journalistic Integrity and Community Service.” Past winners have tackled weighty issues ranging from the legacy of segregation to jail overcrowding.
This year, the award went to a student newspaper for the first time. The Cadet at Virginia Military Institute won for a package of 15 articles covering the contentious implementation of diversity, equity and inclusion training at the school. The decision set off questions about the award process as reporting later revealed that one of the submitted articles failed to disclose a conflict of interest and included lines that were possibly plagiarized.
Despite the concerns raised, the Virginia Press Association announced Thursday that an independent investigation by a local attorney had found that it acted in accordance with its rules in awarding The Cadet its top prize.
“The press and the public have the right to criticize the award, and this right has been exercised,” retired First Amendment lawyer Conrad Shumadine wrote in a report following the investigation. “But acknowledging the possibility of public controversy is fundamentally different from saying that public controversy about any award justifies the VPA making a determination that the evaluation was so flawed it must be overturned.”
When the Virginia Press Association first announced that The Cadet had won the prize at its awards banquet on May 6, the room erupted into applause. Days later, however, local digital outlet Cardinal News published a story scrutinizing The Cadet’s work and funding. (The Cardinal News was one of two other publications competing against The Cadet for the journalistic integrity award.)
The Cadet is funded by a nonprofit run by VMI alumnus Bob Morris, who has sued the school twice over contracts involving its DEI training. The Cadet’s winning entry included coverage of one of those lawsuits but did disclose that Morris was behind those efforts, the Cardinal News reported.
Morris has also allegedly written stories for The Cadet and runs its social media accounts, Inside Higher Ed reported last year based on an interview with an anonymous student working at the paper.
Morris, who did not respond to a request for comment, has said that he merely serves as an adviser to students. A previous student editor of the paper has also said that students control the editorial direction of The Cadet.
In addition to failing to disclose Morris’ involvement with the paper, The Cadet’s article about the lawsuit includes lines that are nearly identical to a separate press release from Protect Honor, an alumni group that has opposed DEI efforts at the school, The Washington Post found. The article does not cite the press release.
Only five of the 15 articles submitted for the contest include bylines by Cadet staff writers. The other 10 articles include a letter to the editor by an alumnus, several anonymous opinion pieces, and articles that are credited to “The Cadet Editorial Staff.” One article contains the byline “jewish-history.com” and is almost entirely a reprint.
Two of the articles attributed directly to staff writers also credit “The Cadet Staff” in the byline. One of those stories runs roughly 1,600 words, more than 1,200 of which come from reprinted documents.
VMI, which receives state funding, has been the center of controversy since an independent investigation ordered by former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam in 2020 found a culture of racism and sexism at the school. In 2021, VMI selected its first Black superintendent, Cedric T. Wins, who has faced considerable backlash from the school’s mostly white alumni as he implements DEI initiatives.
Several of the articles included in The Cadet’s entry overtly oppose those DEI efforts.
On May 31, the Virginia Press Association commissioned an independent investigation into whether it had followed its own rules. A description of the journalistic integrity award on the association’s website notes that the prize “stresses editorial leadership as well as community service above.”
“Entries will be judged on evidence of a significant effort beyond the member’s routine scope; the initiative of the member; use of editorials in connection with the project or projects; and results – what was accomplished?” the rules read.
Shumadine, who conducted the investigation, wrote in his report dated June 8 that the award was final and not subject to challenge. His analysis noted that disqualifying an entry would require “conduct that deviates from normal and ethical journalistic standards” and that making such a determination could be considered defamatory and make Virginia Press Association vulnerable to litigation.
He also wrote that he reviewed the submissions and found that The Cadet’s entries were “original,” appearing to rebut the allegations of plagiarism. The report notes that there were only three entrants and that one judge was responsible for deciding the winner.
Virginia Press Association executive director Betsy Edwards declined to answer questions about the entrants, the judge or the investigation, instead writing that “the report speaks for itself.” Shumadine could not be reached for comment though he told Cardinal News that he did not interview the judge during his investigation.
Cardinal News editor Dwayne Yancey said his outlet’s entry to the contest centered on coverage of a flood that hit Southwest Virginia last July. The identity of the third entrant is not public.
A list of past winners of the award notes that from 1968 to 2016, the competition was divided into multiple groups based on circulation, suggesting that three entrants is unusually low.
Though the identity of the journalist integrity award’s judge has not been made public, Tennessee Press Association interim executive director Robyn Gentile confirmed that the two state associations judged each other’s contests this year. She said she gave the Virginia Press Association a list of “50 or more” Tennessee judges who had volunteered to help with Virginia’s contest. It was up to the Virginia Press Association to contact the judges and assign them to categories.
Typically, for the state contests, there is only one judge for each category, said Chattanooga Times Free Press editor Alison Gerber, who helped judge Virginia’s contest this year. (She did not judge the journalistic integrity award.) Each judge is given access to an online portal where they can review the entries, make notes, and provide a score between one and 10.
When The Cadet received the journalistic integrity award at the Virginia Press Association banquet, the announcer read some of the judge’s comments aloud, noting that they had called the staff of The Cadet “courageous.”
“These young people put their academic and professional careers on the line for what they believe,” the judge wrote. “Those beliefs include balance between opposing sides that resulted in a movement for a discussion to a debate and finally a dialogue. It resulted in a climate to enable informed and reasonable positive change.”
In his report, Shumadine wrote that he did not find anything that suggested the judge had acted inappropriately.
“Judging the quality of journalistic submissions is difficult, and there is nothing I have seen that would suggest much less establish that the judge acted in any way inappropriately,” Shumadine wrote. “Any subjective determination may be subject to debate, but good journalism encourages debate.”