The Journalism Education Association has presented some of its top annual awards to organizers of the "New Voices" student press rights movement, including the architects of successful campaigns in Illinois, Maryland and North Dakota.
College journalism professor Steve Listopad is the 2015 winner of the Hefner Foundation's award for outstanding contributions to the First Amendment by an educator. Listopad worked with six of his students at the University of Jamestown on crafting what became North Dakota's John Wall New Voices Act, one of the strongest laws in the country protecting student journalists and advisers.