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| Madison County Record photo by Shannon Hahn |
The Record won for its "unflinching investigation . . . into attempts by the Huntsville, Ark., school board to cover up sexual assault allegations by junior high school basketball players," said the award announcement. The paper, which has a circulation of 4,000, "found that the local school board members sought to conceal not only the assault allegations but also their decision to reduce the recommended punishment for some students and to throw out punishment for others."
The package is called "Title IX," after the federal civil-rights law that prohibits excluding Americans from educational programs on the basis of sex. The Record began its investigation after concerned parents shared Title IX documents with the paper because they worried the district wouldn't be transparent in its review of the assaults. The paper investigated via interviews and records requests, and turned down other papers' offers of partnership in order to protect sources' anonymity.
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| Huntsville in Madison County (Wikipedia map) |
When the school district tried to get a gag order to prevent sources from speaking to the paper, The Record hired legal counsel and got a favorable ruling. "The reporters persisted in their investigation despite public backlash, a loss of advertising, and letters and social media comments that questioned their integrity and attacked their decision to print the stories," the Nieman Foundation reports. "Due to the attention The Record’s reporting brought to the school board, in February 2022, 19 people filed to run for seven school board seats. In comparison, no one filed during the last school board election. The Huntsville School District also admitted to several FOIA violations and a district judge ordered board members to undergo FOIA training."
One Taylor Award judge, USA Today investigative reporter Pat Beall, praised The Record: "This small paper was punching far, far above its weight class, from its initial decision to publish stories critical of the community’s popular basketball team to its willingness to push back on violations of public-meeting laws. This strong, impactful series cannot be read outside the context of how the fairness and accuracy of these stories, published by a family-owned, third-generation newspaper in a small community where school basketball is king, would have been challenged in ways no national or major regional news organization would have experienced. These stories allowed the voices of young victims to eloquently rebut the adults’ attempts to dismiss the abuse."
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