North Country Public Radio wins 3 Sigma Delta Chi awards; coverage of wildfires, prisons, Uvalde shooting also win

A disabled mother and daughter in northern New York lived
in this tent and in their car. (North Country Public Radio)

Several of the Sigma Delta Chi Awards for excellence in journalism, announced Saturday night by the Society of Professional Journalists, had rural resonance.

The rural media standout was North Country Public Radio, based in Canton, the seat of St. Lawrence County, New York. Its report on affordable housing, or the lack of it, won the award for public service in radio, and its report on uninspected housing for dairy workers won the award for small-market radio feature reporting. NCPR also won the contest's new award for regional political reporting with its profile of U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican Conference, whose district coves most of NCPR's coverage area, where it has 33 transmitters.

A prison in rural Illinois was the topic of "How the newest federal prison became one of the deadliest," a two-part story by NPR and The Marshall Project, which advocates criminal-justice reform. The package won the award for radio investigative reporting. The Intercept's five-part report on the effect of global warming and climate change on prisons and inmates won the award for science, environment or climate reporting.

Coverage of two major wildfires won awards. CBS's "60 Minutes" won the award for television investgative reporting for “What Happened at Grizzly Flats,” a California town destroyed by a mismanaged forest ifre; and KUSA-TV of Denver won the award for TV documentaries in large markets for “The story behind the Marshall Fire” near Boulder. 

Also in broadcasting, Virginia Public Media won the award for small-market television feature reporting for its story on black descendants of Thomas Jefferson; Scripps News and the Center for Investigative Reporting won the award for narrative podcast or radio documentary for their six-part "Inside the global fight for white power;" and NPR won the radio feature reporting award for interviews with the mother of one of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook, Conn., school shooting.

Journalism about the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last spring, received two SDX awards. KPRC-TV in Houston won for deadline reporting, and the San Antonio Express-News won the large-market editorial award for its "Standing with Uvalde" series. David Plazas of The Tennessean won the smaller-market award for a collection of editorials. Jake May of the Flint Journal was a double winner for feature photo and small-circulation breaking-news photo.

Other awards of general interest included:

Fact checking: Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post for "The truth about Hunter Biden."

Washington correspondence: Nick Grube of Honolulu Civil Beat, for coverage of Hawaii's congressional delegation.

Editorial cartooning: Michael Ramirez, Las Vegas Review-Journal (small markets), and Gary Markstein, Creators Syndicate.

Magazine writing: Lizzie Presser of ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine for "I was never ready for this," a profile of a teenager from Copperas Cove, Texas, who became the mother of twins after a judge refused to let her get an abortion.

General column writing: Melinda Henneberger of The Sacramento Bee, for five columns.