Lisa Ben Award for Achievement in Features Coverage

The Lisa Ben Award for Achievement in Features Coverage is designed to honor a journalist whose body of work is distinguished by insight and impact through engaging features on LGBTQ+ individuals, the LGBTQ+ community or LGBTQ+ issues.

The award is named for the pseudonym Edythe Eyde used for her pioneering publication, Vice Versa, which she had to hand deliver to avoid running afoul of laws on the books that made it illegal to send material about lesbians through the mail. In the 1950s she wrote under with the pen name Lisa Ben for The Ladder, the first nationally distributed lesbian magazine.

Lisa Ben was inducted into the NLGJA Journalists Hall of Fame in 2010 for her work that paved the way for many LGBTQ journalists to follow.

This Year’s Winner

Imara Jones

Imara Jones is the recipient of the 2023 Lisa Ben Award for Achievement in Features Coverage. Imara Jones, whose work has won Emmy and Peabody Awards, is the creator of TransLash Media, a cross-platform, non-profit journalism and narrative organization, which produces content to shift the current culture of hostility towards transgender people in the US. She was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People on the planet in 2023. As part of her work at TransLash, Jones hosts the TransLash Podcast with Imara Jones, which received the 2023 Outstanding Podcast Award from GLAAD; as well as the investigative, limited series, The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality which received the Excellence in Podcasting Award from NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists.

Past Winners

Chuck Culpepper

Chuck Culpepper

Chuck Culpepper is the recipient of the 2022 Lisa Ben Award for Achievement in Features Coverage. Culpepper covers national college sports, golf, international sports and some tennis for The Washington Post. He wrote previously for Sports On Earth/USA Today, The...

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Tre’vell Anderson

Tre’vell Anderson

Tre'vell Anderson is the recipient of the 2021 Lisa Ben Award for Achievement in Features Coverage. Anderson is the Editor-At-Large for Tornoto’s Xtra Magazine and co-host of two podcasts, “What A Day'' and “FANTI.” Before joining Xtra Magazine, Anderson served as the...

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Claudia Eller

Claudia Eller

Claudia Eller was the recipient of the 2019 Lisa Ben Award. She is the editor-in-chief of Variety. Eller is among the best known and most respected journalists in the entertainment industry. She came to Variety from The Los Angeles Times, where she spent 20 years as a...

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Henry Goldblatt

Henry Goldblatt

Henry Goldblatt was the recipient of the 2018 Lisa Ben Award. Goldblatt was named editor-in-chief of Entertainment Weekly in 2015, where he previously served as the brand’s deputy managing editor and director of brand development. In 2014, Goldblattwas named deputy...

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Marc Malkin

Marc Malkin

Marc Malkin was the recipient of the 2017 Lisa Ben Award. Malkin served as a reporter and editor at E! News for over a decade. He was the Managing Editor for film at E! News as well as an on-air correspondent. He's also been a reporter, a writer and an online...

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Diane Anderson-Minshall

Diane Anderson-Minshall

Diane Anderson-Minshall is the CEO of Pride Media. She previously worked as editor-at-large of The Advocate Magazine and editor-in-chief of Plus Magazine. She co-authored the 2014 memoir Queerly Beloved, about her relationship with her husband Jacob Anderson-Minshall...

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Cyd Zeigler

Cyd Zeigler

Cyd Zeigler identified an area of LGBTQ life that was largely uncovered by mainstream media and provided a service to the community. Together with co-founder Jim Buzinski, Zeigler has grown OutSports.com, founded in 1999, into a must-read for stories of LGBTQ athletes...

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"Lisa Ben"

"Lisa Ben"

Lisa Ben, pseudonym for the editor of the first lesbian publication. From June 1947 to February 1948, a lesbian who used the pseudonym “Lisa Ben” wrote a small newsletter in Los Angeles called Vice Versa. She relied on a laborious process at her office at the RKO...

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