Winner of award for community journalism reminds us why we need it; he revealed hunger in an affluent region

Brian PJ Cronin (Photo by Beth Cronin, via Flagpole magazine)

Brian PJ Cronin is this year's recipient of the Rollin M. "Pete" McCommons Award for Distinguished Community Journalism from the University of Georgia's Grady School of Journalism and Mass Communications. He won "for his four-part series on food insecurity in the affluent New York state area covered by his paper, The Highlands Current, and entitled Hunger in the Highlands," reports Pete McCommons for Flagpole magazine in Athens, Ga. The award, affectionately dubbed "the Petebody," a la the university's Peabody Awards, was established in 2018 to celebrate the relationships and community efficacy good local journalism can create.

 

This Adobe Stock photo ran with each story in the series.

"We were impressed by the depth and richness of this reporting, and especially the time and resources he was given to carry out this project," Kyser Lough, the chair of the McCommons award committee, told Flagpole. "He used well-rounded sourcing to find the relevant data and people necessary to build a deeper narrative, which allowed him to thoroughly present the topic and then start exploring what people were doing about it. . . . His work highlights the need for in-depth coverage like this that can fully explore the nuance and context of a community topic and the importance of community news outlets."

In his brief acceptance speech, Cronin described his work as "a dicey gig," and  he reflected on journalists' unique bonds with fellow citizens and local businesses. "As I was told by my editor when I started writing for The Highlands Current, there is nothing quite like covering the community in which you live. One week you're walking down Main Street, and everyone is shaking your hand and thanking you for exposing government corruption, and the next week you're doing all your grocery shopping two towns away so that no one throws a punch at you in the check-out line. . . . It’s up to small, local, independent news organizations with boots on the ground and knowledge of their communities to keep their communities from crumbling. Big Tech is not going to do it for us. There may be publishers espousing the supposed benefits that A.I. will bring shrinking newsrooms and time-crunched reporters, but I can assure you, there is no chatbot that is willing to sit through a four-hour zoning board meeting. . . . Thank you for creating an award for community journalism."

The series also won the only Civic and Community Service Award that the National Newspaper Association gave last year. It won other NNA awatds, including one for a series in infrastructure.