Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Maine papers win Community Journalism Award for series on aging in the state with the oldest folks

The Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram won the Community Journalism Award in the Scripps Howard Awards, announced Monday in a Scripps Howard Foundation webcast.

The newspapers won the award and $10,000 for “The Challenge of Our Age,” a series that examined governments' and businesses' inability to meet the needs of the aging in Maine, which has the oldest median age of any state and also has the highest percentage of rural population. In addition to its news coverage, the papers "rallied public support for reform," the foundation said in its release.

Other finalists for the award were Rhiannon Meyers of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times for “Cost of Diabetes,” an in-depth look at the city’s alarming rates for obesity and Type 2 diabetes, and a call to address the epidemic; and the Virgin Islands Daily News for “EMS in Chaos” by Stephen Cheslik, J. Lowe Davis, Lou Mattei and Gerry Yandel, which resulted in disciplinary actions for emergency medical services supervisors and repairs and updates for the U.S. territory’s fleet of ambulances.

The awards have 17 categories. Judy Clabes, publisher of KyForward and former president of the foundation, wrote that judging the Community Journalism award showed her that "both the watchdog function of the free press and the solutions-oriented journalism of deeply community-connected local media are alive and well." For the full list of awards, click here.

The Roy W. Howard Award for Public Service Reporting and $10,000 went to The Guardian US for “The NSA Files,” the first report of the National Security Agency collecting millions of U.S. citizens’ phone records, and follow-ups.

The Arizona Republic in Phoenix received $10,000 and the Breaking News Award for “Yarnell Hill Fire,” simultaneous coverage of three breaking news stories about a fire that killed 19 firefighters, the destruction of 127 homes and a forced mass evacuation.

The Ursula and Gilbert Farfel Prize for Investigative Reporting and $20,000 went to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for “Deadly Delays,” a series that uncovered mismanagement of infant blood tests at hospitals nationwide. The entry was co-winner of the American Society of News Editors award for non-deadline reporting, along with Eli Salow's coverage for The Washington Post of "the human toll of poverty and hunger, a family's loneliness in the aftermath of the Newtown school shooting and how learning to use guns is just a matter of growing up in some parts of America," ASNE says.

Jim Gehrz of the Minneapolis Star Tribune won ASNE's Community Service Photojournalism Award, which rewards photography that captures the sense of a community with powerful and meaningful images and provides an understanding of the community. His entry was "Life in the Boom: Trading Tradition for Oil," about the historic oil boom of North Dakota. "His entry provided an outstanding sense of place and captured the lives of people: home and work in the evolving fabric of America," the judges said.

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