![Salem, Oregon, high school journalist Eddy Binford-Ross covering the 2020 racial justice demonstrations](https://niemanreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Unknown-15-e1618494853886.jpeg)
Eddy Binford-Ross, editor of the South Salem High School newspaper in Oregon, covered last summer's racial justice demonstrations in Salem and Portland.
![Eddy Binford-Ross, editor of the South Salem High School newspaper](https://niemanreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screen-Shot-2021-04-14-at-9.42.18-AM.png)
Eddy Binford-Ross
Eddy is a senior in South Salem High School in Oregon, and editor of the school’s newspaper, The Clypian. We interviewed her last summer after learning that she ventured out night after night, often with parents in tow for safety, to cover the racial justice demonstrations in both Salem and up the highway in Portland, Oregon. After reading the interview and then scrolling through her work for The Clypian (Anglo-Saxon for “call”), I yearned to be back running a newsroom so I could hire her.
Eddy is back in the news, this time because her work merited a formal apology from the Salem-Keizer School Board. In brief, Eddy was slated to be honored by the school board for the many scholarships and journalism awards she received, but the board chair moved to delay the honor because of a story Eddy wrote that could be perceived as uncomfortably political. In other words, for doing exactly what journalists should be doing in service of the public.
The board chair has since reversed himself and apologized.
Eddy Binford-Ross receives the 2021 Student Journalist Impact Award. She is advised by Brian Eriksen, CJE, at South Salem High School, Salem, Oregon.
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— JEA (@nationalJEA) April 13, 2021