Rural journalism wins Sigma Delta Chi Awards

The 2010 Sigma Delta Chi Awards for non-deadline reporting by smaller newspapers went to an extetsive series on "The Rural Health Care Gap" by David Wahlberg in the Wisconsin State Journal (circulation 50,000 to 100,000) and Paula Horton of the Tri-City Herald in southern Washington (under 50,000) for a two-part series on domestic violence. The Forecaster, a weekly newspaper in Maine, won the non-daily investigative reporting award for reporting on use of restraints on children in public schools, and The Times of Gainesville, Ga., won the small-daily award for public-service journalism for a series on the Chattahoochee River, above. The awards were announced today by the Society of Professional Journalists, formerly Sigma Delta Chi.

Wahlberg began his first story: "Throughout rural Wisconsin, clinics are struggling to find doctors. Hospitals are dropping nursing homes and doing away with delivering babies. Pharmacies are closing." The newspaper added in a graphic, "Good, consistent health care is hard to come by all across rural America. The consequences can be devastating." The series can be a road map for reporting on rural health in any state, and SPJ has made PDFs of all the pages available here.

The Washington series was prompted by "the recent deaths of two young women, allegedly at the hands of their ex-boyfriends, within two weeks of each other," Horton wrote. The series included short biographies and photos of domestic-violence victims in the Pasco-Kennewick-Richland region. The PDFs are here.

The restraints investigated by The Forecaster's Emily Parkhurst are defined as therapeutic, but have caused injuries to children. The story is available in online segments; links appear after the award's listing on an SPJ web page, here.

The public-service award to The Times came not long after the paper was embarassed by the failure to report its editor's drunk-driving arrest. Ashley Fielding and Sara Guevara did the series on the Chattahoochee, which can be read here.

The award for investigative reporting by daily newspapers of less than 50,000 circulation went to the St. Cloud Times for "Gambling on Growth," a series by Britt Johnsen and Kirsti Mahron on "the public cost of Central Minnesota's housing boom and bust." The public cost? "Government leaders who borrowed money to build utilities and roads that go nowhere are trying to figure out how to pay the bill," the paper said. Its pages are here.

The awards for feature reporting in dailies of less than 50,000 circulation went to Daniel Person and Michael Gibney of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, for a four-part series on the return of the gray wolf to Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. The PDFs are here.

Mike Tyree and David Miller of Northern Michigan's Traverse City Record-Eagle won the award for editorial writing in small dailies, for editorials about police misconduct. The PDFs are here. Jim Kenyon of the Valley News in Lebanon, N.H. (and White River Junction, Vt.) won the award for general column writing in small dailies. His work is here.

WCHS Radio in Charleston, W.Va., won a breaking-news award for small-market stations for its initial coverage of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster. The small-market award for public service in television journalism went to Rhonda McBride, Jonathan Hartford and Amy Modig of KTUU-TV in Anchorage for "Pandora's Bottle," about the effects of alcohol on the unborn.

You might say there was another rural winner, in a newspaper that is rarely thought of as rural but probably has the best rural coverage of any American paper, because it devotes staff and space to it. Dan Barry of The New York Times won the big-paper award for column writing, for "This Land," a column that often visits rural places. Only one of the columns he entered was rural, but we note the award in order to recognize the good work that he does.