Mirror Indy Editor-in-Chief Oseye Boyd received the second annual Kevin R. Armstrong Ethical Leadership Award on Monday, April 7 at the University of Indianapolis.
Boyd is the second award recipient, following last year’s retired WNBA star Tamika Catchings, according to an article published in 2024 by The Reflector. According to a UIndy press release, the award is housed in the university’s Center for Ethics. Assistant Professor of Philosophy Lacey Davidson serves as its director, according to her page on the center’s website.
Davidson praised Kevin R. Armstrong, the namesake of the award. She described him as someone else who, like Boyd, is an exemplar of ethical leadership.
“He is a really cool example of someone who has a clear ethical framework, especially for acknowledging our responsibilities to leave things better than we found them,” Davidson said. “From interacting with Kevin, that is one of the things I honor and respect the most about him is he is trying to improve everything he interacts with, but in a very kind and collaborative way.”
Davidson said Armstrong is a member of the UIndy board of trustees and is a former United Methodist Church ordained minister. He later worked in healthcare administration at Methodist Hospital.
Davidson said the award goes to individuals from Indiana who have modeled ethical leadership. She said there is also a donation presented to a nonprofit organization as part of the award, and both last and this year’s winners are directly associated with specific nonprofits. This, Davidson said, made them ideal candidates for the award. Catchings founded Catch the Stars, a youth empowerment nonprofit. Free Press Indiana, a statewide journalism nonprofit, is the parent group of Mirror Indy, Boyd’s organization.
According to its LinkedIn page, Mirror Indy is a nonprofit newsroom that focuses on community-oriented reporting in Indianapolis. Boyd said it is a newer organization, founded in December 2023, whose mission is to complement and partner with other news organizations.
“Mirror Indy, we are here to fill gaps in news. We’re not comparing ourselves to any other publications,” Boyd said. “We actually are partners with many publications around the city, TV and digital news.”
Boyd said that her long-term goal is to see Mirror Indy continue in its core values. These include being sustainable, trustworthy and Indianapolis-focused.
“…We have created something that’s sustainable, that people trust us and rely on us, and they come to us for their news and information,” Boyd said about Mirror Indy. “That they know that we have their backs, we have Indianapolis’s backs, that we are trying to make sure, that we are Indianapolis people, we live in this community, we care about Indianapolis, we’re journalists, and we’re a service.”
According to Boyd’s LinkedIn page, she has over 25 years of experience in journalism. Boyd was the previous editor of the Indianapolis Recorder and the public engagement editor of the Indianapolis Star. She said she has wanted to be a journalist since she was in fourth grade, was involved in her high school newspaper, majored in journalism at Ball State University and previously worked at the local newspaper in Muncie.
Boyd said that it is important for journalists to have ethics in their reporting. This is especially true in the current media climate, she said.
“I think in our industry, that is something that is really important,” Boyd said. “And I don’t want to say people don’t have it, but I think now, more than ever, people need to see it, because there is such a distrust of media.”
Davidson said Boyd’s approach to journalism focuses on issues that are not always covered. This, Davidson said, aligns with the mission of the Armstrong award.
“One of the things that I was especially drawn to was a commitment to local journalism and telling the stories of people directly that are sometimes unheard or covered over,” Davidson said.
Davidson listed several examples of Boyd’s commitment which serve as examples of her commitment. These include her creation of an IndyStar board that covered important issues pertaining to the Black community, her focus on the city from an Indianapolis-centric perspective and her efforts to fill gaps in the city’s news coverage.
