Saturday, April 1, 2006

Tennessee corruption story can't beat toxic waste in New Jersey Investigative reporting awards A series of stories about Capitol Hill Corruption in Tennessee made to the finals of the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors Award competitions, but a newspaper's work uncovering toxic waste in New Jersey and a Cleveland television station's revelations about a school district's "deception, fraud, mismanagement and coverups" took home the IRE Medal, the group's top award. The medal winners were The Record in Bergen County, N.J., and Cleveland's WJW-TV, for School Bus Bloat 2005. No awards or finalists were named in the purely "online" category this year, but the Bergen Record project was cited for its online component. "This work stood out not only for its exhaustive reporting and clear writing," the judges said, "but for its riveting multimedia presentation." View it online at http://www.toxiclegacy.com (Macromedia Flash required) See IRE's newsletter, Extra! Extra!, and its full list of award winners. Awards are divided into categories, including newspaper circulation and television market size.  Books, magazines and online news sites also are assigned to award categories. Special category medals went to Jerry Mitchell of The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., for his 17 years of crime reporting, reopening investigations of decades-old crimes against civil rights workers, and to Illinois Small Newspaper Group reporter Scott Reeder, who filed 1,500 Freedom of Information Act requests with almost 900 government entities to track school districts' lack of success at dismissing underperforming teachers. The Tennessee finalist was an already award-winning series of reports by Nashville's WTVF, available online as http://NewsChannel5.com -- which has archived more than 50 of its stories related to the "Tennessee Waltz" scandal. Students might be especially interested in two stories by young reporters. The first won an IRE Certificate; the second made it into the finals: J. David McSwane, began his investigation of desperate U.S. Army recruiting tactics while he was a 17-year-old writing for a school newspaper; the expanded story, An Army of Anyone, ran in Denver's Westword weekly. In some inter-campus sleuthing, a Southern Methodist University investigative reporting class was a finalist for uncovering health and safety concerns in a University of Texas, Dallas, student residence -- enough to headline the final story "The Dorm from Hell."  Here's the IRE press release about all 15 prizes and finalists. IRE is a 4,500-member professional and educational organization based at the Missouri School of Journalism. 2:49:54 PM    comment []

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