Knox College announced Monday that journalist Maria Hinojosa will be the speaker at the 2020 Commencement exercises held in June.
Hinojosa is the anchor and executive producer of the NPR distributed Peabody Award-winning show Latino USA. She is also the founder, president, and CEO of Futuro Media Group, an independent, nonprofit, multi-platform, community-based journalism organization that respects and celebrates the cultural richness of the American Experience. She is also the co-host of In The Thick, a political podcast on Futuro Media.
Her nearly 30-year career as a journalist includes reporting for PBS, CBS, WNBC, CNN, NPR, and anchoring the Emmy Award-winning talk show Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One. Additionally, she is also a new contributor to the long-running, award-winning news program CBS Sunday Morning and a frequent guest on MSNBC. She is also a three-time published author.
She has won dozens of awards, including four Emmy’s, the John Chancellor Award, the Studs Terkel Community Media Award, two Robert F. Kennedy Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award, as well as the Ruben Salazar Lifetime Achievement Award.
She is honored as being the first Latina to anchor a PBS FRONTLINE report: “Lost in Detention,” which aired in October of 2011 and explored abuse at immigrant detention facilities. That report garnered attention from Capitol Hill as well as both the mainstream and Spanish-language media.
“Knox has a long and proud history of alumni and students who have made significant contributions to the field of journalism, from S.S. McClure, one of the nation’s first ‘muckraking’ journalists, to the current staff of The Knox Student, which was named a 2019 Pacemaker Finalist by the Associated Collegiate Press,” said Knox College President Teresa Amott. “The selection of Ms. Hinojosa as Commencement speaker honors that history and places it in a contemporary media context.”
Hinojosa joins the long list of recent speakers at the college, including actress and philanthropist Eva Longoria, comedian Stephen Colbert, then-Senator Barack Obama, journalist William Whitaker, Brigadier General Mark Martins, and current U.S. Senator Dick Durbin.
Commencement will be held on Sunday, June 7, at 10:00 a.m. on the South Lawn of Old Main on the college’s campus. It is free and open to the public.
