Trinity’s Greenberg Center Presents 2025 Berkman Journalism Award to Chana Joffe-Walt

Trinity College’s Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life recently presented the 2025 Moses Berkman 1920 Memorial Journalism Award to Chana Joffe-Walt, a radio journalist and producer for This American Life.

Joffe-Walt came to campus on October 22 to accept the award and to join in a conversation with Leslie Ribovich, director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life and associate professor of religious studies and public policy and law, in the 1823 Room of Raether Library.

The prize honors a journalist whose work demonstrates the qualities of integrity, insight, journalistic excellence, and serious moral purpose that were the hallmarks of Trinity alumnus Berkman’s journalism career as a political editor, columnist, and editorial writer for The Hartford Times from the 1920s to the 1950s. The award was established by a gift from the estate of his wife, Florence Berkman, also a longtime journalist at The Hartford Times and The Hartford Courant.

The Greenberg Center—with a mission to advance scholarly knowledge about religion and public life to Trinity and the broader public—awards this prize every other year as a part of its Program on Public Values. Through the program, the Greenberg Center explores values that inform public debate on critical issues of the time, such as education and climate change.

In her introduction of Joffe-Walt, Ribovich said, “In addition to education reporting, she’s reported on a host of topics including the Me Too movement, and more recently on Gaza. A feature of her reporting is that she often speaks with children to learn about their experiences from the source.”

Joffe-Walt discussed how she got into journalism, addressed specific moments in her career, and answered questions from students. She said that she first entered the world of journalism through photography. “I was interested in photography when I was in school and I have always loved taking portraits of people and the experience of getting to know them through those portraits,” Joffe-Walt said. Her photography ultimately led her to start a program to teach teenagers about documentary arts.

Joffe-Walt said she then fell in love with journalism and being able to ask people questions directly. She learned many things from the experience, she added, notably that kids would ask profound, direct, and brave questions which she tries to emulate when she does interviews.

Much of Joffe-Walt’s work as a journalist has focused on education. She has written several pieces about inequalities in schools talking about many issues impacting school systems in the United States. In her reporting, she has looked into what the city of Hartford has done to work toward increasing its level of integrated education.

“Reporting on lots of efforts at school ed reform, it started to feel like this glaring thing that wasn’t being talked about and mentioned,” Joffe-Walt said. She said that her research and journalism highlights the nuances of school inequalities all over the country, as she speaks with people who are directly affected.

When discussing journalism in general, Joffe-Walt spoke about her thoughts about objectivity versus opinionated journalism. “I think fairness is really important. When I respond to something that is an opinion, it is informed by my reporting. I try not to talk about things I don’t know anything about, and I certainly don’t have strong opinions that I will share with you all about things I haven’t reported on,” she said to the group gathered for the talk.

“I don’t find it to be a useful pursuit to achieve some sort of fictional objectivity. I do think it’s a really fragile and delicate and charged time to be a journalist sharing any kind of opinion,” Joffe-Walt said. “I think it’s right to think about what you’re putting out there, and I also think it’s a central part of journalism to be telling the truth about what is happening.”

She added, “I do think that the role of journalists is to gather information and understand the world, then try to share that in a way that provides some value that isn’t just reciting facts.”

Ribovich said that she wanted Trinity students who observed this conversation to see how deeply Joffe-Walt cares about people and their stories. “I hope students will see that it’s okay if they don’t have answers to the biggest challenges facing the world today, and that sometimes the way to address those challenges is not with a single plan of action, but through the creative and fact-gathering projects,” she said.

Listen to episodes of Joffe-Walt’s This American Life here.