Derrick Z. Jackson

Award-winning news, sports, environmental and social justice journalist, author, and photographer

Derrick Z. Jackson is a national award-winning news, sports, environmental and social justice journalist, author, and photographer. In more than 45 years with the Boston Globe, Newsday, and as an independent writer, Jackson has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Headliners Awards, an 11-time award winner from NABJ, a 4-time winner from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, a 2-time commentary winner from the national Education Writers Association, and a commentary winner from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.

His awards go back to a 1979 first prize for feature writing from the Professional Basketball Writers Association and sharing the 1985 Columbia University Meyer Berger Award for coverage of New York City. The Berger Award was for coverage of police brutality and slum conditions that brought to life “some of the often-forgotten neighborhoods and inhabitants of New York.”

Most recently, Jackson’s commentaries won first place awards in 2022 from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, the National Association of Black Journalists, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the Outdoor Writers Association of America. In 2021, he was the Scripps Howard Awards winner for Excellence in Opinion Writing and the winner in both Social Justice and Sports commentary from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

The awards were for work ranging from racist structures in sports to COVID-19 disparities and from wildlife photo essays to environmental injustice for The Union of Concerned Scientists, Grist, The American Prospect Magazine, ESPN’s Andscape, and A.T. Journeys Magazine. Jackson’s citation for his Scripps Howard Award said in part:

"Derrick Z. Jackson was among the first voices warning that Black and Latinx populations in the United States would die due to COVID-19 at a disproportionately higher rate than white Americans. . .Jackson’s blog commentary drew stark attention to the dilatory effects caused by the politicization of the virus. In his pieces, he called out national leaders – many of them white – for essentially ignoring the virus’ impact on essential workers who are often, in large numbers, people of color. 

“The inequalities made evident by COVID-19, Jackson writes, became part of the fabric of unrest and protest triggered by the fatal police shootings of unarmed Black Americans. . .Derrick Jackson writes with the aplomb of one heavily armed intellectually and the vigor of a man determined to use his voice to right wrongs. His research and sourcing provide credibility, and his eloquent writing makes his work moving and memorable. His range is wide, his knowledge is deep, and his skill translates complex topics into clear understanding."

Jackson is also an award-winning author, the 2021 winner in teen nonfiction in the Independent Book Publishers Association’s 2021 Benjamin Franklin Awards, for co-authoring and photographing “The Puffin Plan: Restoring Seabirds to Egg Rock and Beyond” (Tumblehome Books). Jackson is also co-author and photographer of the book, “Project Puffin: The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock,” (Yale University Press, 2015). He wrote three chapters in “The Speech: Race and Barack Obama’s ‘A More Perfect Union,’” published by Bloomsbury Books in 2009. He also authored a widely quoted 2017 paper on the national media’s failure to cover the Flint Water Crisis as a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. 

In photography, Jackson’s presidential campaign images of Barack Obama were exhibited in Boston's Museum of African American History. His images of Obama, wildlife and were exhibited at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. He is a 3-time finalist in BirdWatching Magazine contests, including third place in 2020. He was also a semifinalist in the 2018 Nature’s Best Photography awards and was a 2013 and 2012 finalist in Outdoor Photographer magazine’s The American Landscape Contest. 

Jackson is a native of Milwaukee, Wis., and is a 1976 graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Besides being a Shorenstein Fellow, Jackson was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University in 1984. He holds three honorary degrees, from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, Salem State University, and the Episcopal Divinity School. He has also been honored by his alma mater with its Distinguished Alumni Community Service award for his involvement in Scouting and Big Brothers and with its Alum of the Year in the school’s Communications Department. Jackson is a recipient of Curry College’s Human Rights Award and is a member of the Sigma Pi Phi fraternity, which has had in its ranks W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Arthur Ashe.  

Jackson is married to Dr. Michelle Holmes, a diet and breast cancer researcher and diversity consultant. They have two grown sons, a daughter-in-law and a grandson.