The AAJA Leadership in Diversity Award honors an individual or corporation that has made strides in promoting and demonstrating diversity in the news media industry. AAJA presented its 2005 Leadership in Diversity Award to Joe Grimm.

Joe Grimm

Since 1990, Grimm has been newsroom recruiter and staff development coordinator at the Detroit Free Press, where he coordinates staff selection efforts, training and education for newsroom staffers and the summer internship program. In 1993, he established Detroit as the first city in the nation with an annual Minorities in Newspapers Jobs Fair. In 1997, he launched the JobsPage, a journalism career Web site and then in 2000 directed the creation of a resource guide called "100 Questions and Answers About Arab Americans."

Grimm, who joined the Free Press in 1983, is also an advisory board member for Michigan's Council of Asian Pacific Americans and on the advisory board to the Great Lakes Books series at Wayne State University Press.

"(Joe) has been not only a tireless champion of bringing into the profession journalists with talent or promise, but also of elevating their game once they're there. He has done so especially with journalists of color," said the judges. "Joe's contributions go far beyond those of a recruiter. When ASNE said last year it would look to cut job fairs and the student newspaper at its convention because of hard economic times, Joe was among the first to sound the alarms about the dangerous effects that would have on newsroom diversity.

And when the Michigan chapter (of AAJA) hosted the forum 'Remembering Vincent Chin: A Conversation About Civil Rights and Journalism' this spring as a special fundraiser for the AAJA Endowment Fund, Joe lent his support loud and clear: He signed on as one of the financial sponsors. AAJA and journalism are better off because of Joe Grimm."