By Sonni Efron

Peter Bhatia has won the 2020 Benjamin C. Bradlee Editor of the Year Award from the National Press Foundation.

Bhatia led the Detroit Free Press in superb coverage of the tumultuous events of 2020 and has been a longstanding and committed advocate for diversity, both in the newsroom and in the practice of community journalism.

“Every one of us needs to make sure we are hearing the diverse voices of the communities we serve – and that is reflected in our investigative and enterprise reporting and in our stories of every-day people doing extraordinary things,” Bhatia wrote in a note to staff after the murder of George Floyd. “Hold me and the newsroom leadership accountable for making tangible progress on these fronts. It has always mattered and never more so than now.”

Bhatia will be celebrated at NPF’s annual awards ceremony on February 18, 2021. More about the NPF winners and the awards ceremony is here.

The National Press Foundation established the Editor of the Year Award in 1984 to recognize significant achievements that enhance the quality of journalism in the United States.  Previous winners include Aminda (Mindy) Marqués González, former editor of the Miami Herald, Rick Hutzell, editor of the Annapolis, Md., Capital Gazette, and Nicole Carroll, former editor of the Arizona Republic and now editor-in-chief of USA Today.

The judges were Tom Rosenstiel of the American Press Institute, Sandy Sugawara, former Deputy Director of the Voice of America, Robyn Tomlin, President and Editor of the News & Observer and Herald Sun in Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina, and Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief of USA Today. Page recused herself from the decision because Gannett owns both the Detroit Free Press and USA Today, but noted that “Peter has led groundbreaking coverage at the Detroit Free Press, and I’m proud to count him as a colleague.”