Nominations Now Open for TBA Fourth Estate Award - Articles

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Nominations Now Open for TBA Fourth Estate Award

Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin & Barry Kolar on Mar 15, 2021

NASHVILLE, March 12, 2021 -- The Tennessee Bar Association has opened the nomination period for the Fourth Estate Award: Honoring Courageous Reporting on Justice and the Law. This year's prize includes a $250 honorarium for the winner.

The TBA strongly supports our freedom of expression under the First Amendment, as exercised by lawyers on behalf of their clients and by journalists on behalf of the public, and it particularly wants to recognize and encourage journalists who promote public understanding of the rule of law and improvements in our system of justice through their vigorous exercise of their First Amendment rights.

Prior winners include the WSMV Channel 4 I-Team, Steven Hale of the Nashville Scene and the Bristol Herald Courier, who all promoted a better understanding of the legal system in Tennessee with fact-based and courageous reporting.

Nominees must be Tennessee-based journalists who have shown exemplary courage in exercising First Amendment rights in the promotion of public understanding of how the law and our legal system works and how it should work as demonstrated by a story or series of related stories published in 2020.

Nominees may be individuals or teams of journalists who worked on the published stories. Journalists may also self-nominate. The nominees may have published their story or stories online, in a newspaper or magazine, in a book, on a podcast or on television or radio.

The presentation of this award will be made in June at the annual meeting of the Tennessee Bar Association. The deadline for entry is April 30.

For more information, contact TBA Assistant Executive Director Barry Kolar.