From the Nominator

When COVID-19 arrived in March 2020, our communications team, working from our home offices and kitchen tables, immediately sought new ways for our faculty members to provide trustworthy information and expertise to the media and general public during what would become the biggest ongoing news story in a century. 

On March 24, 2020, we held the first of 49 (and counting) Zoom-based media briefings in which Duke scholars discussed a topic related to the pandemic and took questions from journalists. The first briefing featured experts in economics and child psychiatry exploring issues around panic, anxiety, and parenting. In all, we held 42 briefings in 2020.

The media coverage and positive response to our session were immediate, so we held another briefing the next week and didn't stop. We featured vaccine experts, public health scholars, teachers and economists. When the Black Lives Matter protests dominated headlines, we tapped scholars in policing, law, race, and culture, and historians familiar with social movements.

And during the seemingly endless 2020 election season, we showcased experts in politics, policy, social media, disinformation, election security, and the peaceful transfer of power, among other pertinent issues.

While our media reach is international, we’re perhaps proudest of work we did locally, including several bilingual briefings specifically targeting North Carolina’s Spanish-language media outlets.

From the Judges

This was a well-done campaign that leaned on the academic experts. They made something bigger than the institution, doing something good for the community (in this case, a worldwide community).