Monday, April 13, 2009

Sigma Delta Chi Awards have rural resonance

There's some rural resonance in most categories of the annual Sigma Delta Chi Awards for journalism, announced today by the Society of Professional Journalists.

In some cases, awards went to rural media or those telling rural-related stories to large rural audiences. The Gazette of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, circulation 58,000, won for deadline reporting among newspapers with circulations less than 100,000, for its coverage of a record flood in central Iowa. Jonathan Ellis of The Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., circulation 48,000, won the investigative reporting award for smaller-circulation papers, for "Casino Kings." Smaller newspapers continued to win the SDX award for cartooning. This year's goes to Chris Britt of the State Journal Register in Springfield, Ill., circulation 50,000.

Other awards were for work that examined issues or topics with strong rural angles. John Burnett, Marisa Penaloza, Quinn O'Toole and Tanya Ballard Brown of National Public Radio won the radio investigative reporting award for "Dirty Money," a series about local law-enforcement agencies becoming dependent on confiscations from drug traffickers. The award for breaking news coverage in small television markets (Nos. 51 and below) went to Alison Morrow, Jerry Owens and John Martin of WBIR-TV in Knoxville for coverage of the TVA coal-ash spill. The large-market award for feature reporting went to Boyd Huppert and Jonathan Malat of KARE-TV in Minneapolis for "The Land of 10,000 Stories," a series of features, many about rural Minnesota and Wisconsin. The staff of KTUU in Anchorage, which has a large rural audience, won the public-service TV award for its coverage of the trial of then-U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.

Online winners with rural resonance included "Perils of the New Pesticides," a reporting project by the Center for Public Integrity. For the full list, go to http://www.spj.org/.

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