SDX 2001 Awards Gallery
Continuous Coverage
Newspaper/Wire Service (Circ. Over 100,000)
Newspaper/Wire Service (Circ. Under 100,000)
Washington Correspondence
Foreign Correspondence
Photo Illustration
Informational Graphics
Online (Affiliated)
Online (Independent)
Follow the whole story
By Max Cacas
On the television show “M*A*S*H,” they
called it “meatball surgery.” Fix up the wounded as
best as you can, stabilize them for transport, and get them to a
hospital as quickly as you can for more comprehensive treatment.
As a broadcast – and now online – journalist, I’m
most familiar with what I euphemistically call “meatball journalism.”
You cover the latest, breaking news, get it first and get it right,
and move on to the next story. It’s something I’m most
comfortable with, and something I’ve been doing for a long
time.
More often than not, a good reporter finds a story like this simply
by noticing something, even a small thing, that another reporter
won’t – and then by chasing after the story. Other times,
you don’t find the story; the story finds you.
In either case, it all depends on what you and your news organization
choose to do with the story. The lucky ones have bosses and companies
willing to back their search and provide the time and other resources
necessary. Free-lancers often dip into their own finances to cover
the cost of their search, hopeful for future professional satisfaction
and financial reward for their sacrifice. Still others, as we know,
pay for their search with their very lives.
That’s something that the cheap shot artists – and all
the others who openly disparage and thumb their noses at what we
proudly call “journalism” – will never understand:
That your credibility as a journalist rests on that relentless search
for the facts behind the truth (reporting); to sort out what is,
and isn’t important (editing and placing things in context);
and then to present that truth in a way that has meaning to the
reader, the listener, and the viewer (delivering the news).
These are the journalists we honor for their “Continuous Coverage”
in the past year.
Max Cacas is a newswriter for WTOP AM/FM in Washington,
D.C., and its Web sites, wtopnews.com and federalnewsradio.com.
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Newspaper/Wire Service (Circ. Over 100,000)
Tim Barker and Mary Shanklin, Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel, One-Ticket Town: The Costs of a Tourism Economy
The people and economy of Orlando, Fla., do not count
the words “happily ever after” as part of the region’s
vocabulary.
While theme parks such as Disney World, Universal Studios and Sea
World consume colossal amounts of tourist dollars, reporters Tim
Barker and Mary Shanklin asked the question: How much of the income
remains in the local economy?
“One-Ticket Town: The Costs of a Tourism Economy” was
published in a five-part series to celebrate the 30th anniversary
of Disney World’s opening. The Sentinel covered its pages
with analysis, tourist profiles and local reactions to the fairytale
theme park and its effects on the Orlando-area economy:
The Sentinel analyzed how Central Florida stacks up against 20 other cities – 10 larger and 10 smaller – in everything from classroom sizes to wages. What is clear is this: The nation’s 27th-largest metropolitan area excels at little beyond one of the world’s top tourist destinations, and it lags behind most comparably sized U.S. cities in virtually every category studied.
The Orlando region is on an economic plateau it reached through three decades of tourism successes. This landscape is continually dotted with new theme parks, hotels and an expanding convention center. But with each new tourism endeavor, Orlando’s dependence on the industry grows.
Barker and Shanklin reported that Orlando employees
are the lowest paid of 20 cities of comparable size, such as Milwaukee,
Indianapolis and San Antonio. Compared to the other cities, Orlando
employees have also seen the fourth-smallest growth in income since
1989.
The series included a story on Disney’s World’s past
– even before the park broke ground. Originally, Walt Disney
visited small-town Ocala, Fla., to purchase land for his Magic Kingdom.
Barker and Shanklin added a personal tone to the stories by following
a family of five on their vacation to Disney World. The stories
examined the family’s spending and how those dollars impacted
the Orlando economy.
The series also looked at the suffering conditions of Orlando schools,
effects of low wages on home ownership and overwhelmingly high crime
rates.
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Newspaper/Wire Service (Circ. Under
100,000)
T.J. Sullivan, Ventura (Calif.) County Star, The Man Behind the Money Pit
Text from this entry
Ventura County Star reporter T.J. Sullivan beat the
bigger papers to the story of Donald Dayton Lukens.
Months before the story of Lukens, a financial adviser at the center
of a financial corruption scandal that cost many their life savings,
hit major newsstands, Sullivan wrote “The Man Behind the Money
Pit.”
“This is the story of Donald Dayton Lukens,
a local boy made good,” Sullivan said. “It’s the
story of his enviable life enriched with the adornments of wealth.
... It’s about a man once described by his spouse as a financial
wizard with a pedal-to-the-metal personality, a man who sought investments
from the people closest to him – his friends, family, fellow
church parishioners, his children’s teacher and even his pastor.
It’s about the celebrities – models and professional
athletes – who gave him hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It’s a tale of avarice and blind trust. And it’s about
how one day, all the money was gone and everyone was left to wonder
where it went.”
Sullivan was first introduced to the financial guru when the Star
covered a bankruptcy hearing in which Lukens was arrested for outstanding
casino debts in Las Vegas. Editors asked Sullivan to find out more
on the man who claimed to owe $47 million in debt with less than
$1 million in assets.
After repeated phone calls to Lukens’s attorneys, friends
and family, one source told Sullivan that the Lukens story was “bigger
than your paper.”
“I refused to accept that the size of a newspaper has anything
to do with its ability to report a story,” Sullivan said.
Starting with local resources, Sullivan searched through late-1960s
Channel Island High School yearbooks. He matched names mentioned
in the bankruptcy investigation with Lukens’ baseball and
basketball teammates, coaches, Key Club members and teachers.
Sullivan’s reporting details the extravagant lifestyle of
Lukens down to the “golden, wall-mounted towel warmers in
his master bathroom,” but quickly shifts to the candid words
of former friends who trusted Lukens with their life savings:
“He was making it out that they didn’t have anything to eat, which was a bunch of stuff,” said Margaret “Peggy” Barnes, who may lose her home as a result of money she lost investing with Lukens.
While Sullivan spent about a month interviewing people
in the same situation as Barnes, he said the story is not necessarily
ideal.
“This is really one of those stories where it’s difficult
to find gratification,” Sullivan said. “There is no
winner in this tale. People lost their retirement savings. ... I
can’t say any part of this story made me feel good.
“We don’t do this for awards. We do it to give light
and let people find their own way. I thought of that motto many
times last year while writing this story.”
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Peter G. Gosselin, Los Angeles Times, Private Prosperities, Public Breakdowns
Text from entry
In the Los Angeles Times’ two-part series “Private
Prosperities, Public Breakdowns,” economist Peter G. Gosselin
investigates the disparity Americans face when the private sector
fails to adequately support public projects.
The reports look back to the 1990s, when the private sector was
more concerned with purchasing fancy cars, luxurious homes and personal
computers than making contributions to public systems that are now
in disrepair and routinely disrupt the lives of American citizens.
In “Most of the West in the Same Power Jam
as California,” Gosselin examines the population boom of the
West and the control that California and southwest states play over
smaller western states such as Montana and Utah.
For more than a century, California ran a simple account with the rest of the West: It demanded and the West supplied, most especially water and power.
But as the Western states have ballooned in the last decade – in no small part because of an outbound trek of Californians – this simple, supply-demand relationship had broken down. ...
“We don’t know how bad it’s going to be yet,” said Utah’s Republican governor, Mike Leavitt. “We won’t know that until May, June, July and August, when everyone in the Southwest turns on their swamp coolers.”
Gosselin presents the complicated world of economics
to readers in a clear tone – a product of years of experience.
“Peter Gosselin, who covers economics for the Los Angeles
Times, defies the stereotype of his ilk: Yes, he knows how to think
like an economist, but he doesn’t write like one,” said
Dean P. Baquet, managing editor of the Times. “He is so fluent
in his subject that he can make it clear – even interesting
– to the rest of us. And he is without peer in showing how
it is relevant to our lives.”
Gosselin continues the detailed series in “Amid Nationwide
Prosperity, ERs See a Growing Emergency.” Paying special attention
to the growing frustration of patients and medical workers, Gosselin
examined the overwhelmingly crowded conditions of medical centers
in American cities.
“Rich or poor, black or white, it doesn’t matter,” said Robert E. Maher Jr., who until recently was chief executive of Worcester Medical Center in Massachusetts. “The capacity simply isn’t out there anymore.”
Maher should know. When he had a heart attack in November while flying into Boston, he was turned away from the closest hospital, Massachusetts General, because of overcrowding and was forced to take an ambulance across town to find treatment.
Gosselin’s series reflects on the economic boom
that readers enjoyed in the 1990s and reminds them that their lifestyles
may have come with a greater price in the long term.
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Foreign Correspondence
This Award was rescinded by the SPJ Board of Directors on May 15, 2004.
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Carlos Gonzalez, San Francisco Chronicle, Circle of Friends
The fast-paced lives of Americans have spawned a
new genre of meeting and greeting people. Receiving an instant message
is, after all, quicker than a handshake. And typing “LOL”
(online slang for “Laugh Out Loud”) passes faster than
an episode of uncontrollable laughter.
When asked to capture the tone of online relationships, San Francisco
Chronicle photographer Carlos Gonzales envisioned the casualness
of a party scene wrapped with haphazard addresses of Web sites and
ending the tail of the tornado with the minimalist scene of a monitor
and a modem.
While capturing the simplicity of the partygoers proved easy, winding
the links around the swirl of bodies was a different story.
“The shoot itself was relatively straightforward,” said
Phil Bronstein, executive editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.
“The time-consuming work came afterward: Gonzalez used After
Effects, a movie editing software program, to construct the URLs
that linked the models together. That took three days to get right.”
The days of tweaking, however, paid off when Gonzalez’s “Circle
of Friends” received unspoken compliments from coworkers and
readers.
“I saw folks in the office and in coffee shops in my neighborhood
lingering over it,” Gonzalez said. “It hit the mark.”
The vivid color and tone of “Circle of Friends” attracts
readers to its presence as it encompasses the all-consuming role
that technology plays on people’s lives. The whirlwind of
communication blurs the not-so-fine lines of real life and e-life.
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Staff of the Orange County (Calif.) Register, Attack on America
While parents looked for ways to explain the death
and destruction of Sept. 11 to their children, newspaper staffs
also searched for ways to spell out the facts and figures of the
terrorist attacks that hit Americans that day.
Keeping in mind the writing adage of “show, don’t tell,”
The Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif., used an array of
graphics to detail the tragedy of the day and the aftermath of the
days after.
“From the first day of coverage, we aimed to explain the complex
web of events in a way which would not be overwhelming,” said
Kris Viesselman, senior art director of The Register. “We
used visual storytelling to convey this information to readers.”
The series of graphics begins with an illustration of Ground Zero
– buildings lettered, planes numbered and people scattered
about the plaza. Detailed information on the jets and the buildings’
collapses clarify the meticulous graphics.
Inside The Register, images of the inside of a cockpit are used
to explain how hijackers were able to alter the flight patterns
of the four jets.
The paper also published several images that illustrated the new
security that was being considered for national airports and flights.
A blueprint of the Pentagon showed readers the collapsed areas with
a small image of new reinforcements that replaced the damaged sections.
A pictograph lies beside the blueprint, depicting the number of
dead and missing as a result of the destruction of the Pentagon.
Appropriately titled “Grim Task,” a colored graphic
examines the damage done to each of the World Trade Center towers.
Accompanying copy explains the rescue tactics of workers and volunteers
for sifting through the debris.
Later, graphics explain the process medical examiners go though
while attempting to identify remains found at the site.
As the events of Sept. 11 became more clear, The Register ran a
timeline that followed the attacks – the times and places
of the four jets’ takeoffs, the course changes, the photos
of the planes crashing into the buildings and the fire and dust
that spread afterward.
The Register also used sidebars and infographics to explain the
whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and strategies the government would
likely use to find him.
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Geraldine Sealey, ABCNEWS.com, How We’ve Changed
Text from this entry
When a major news story breaks, the initial reporting
covers the basic facts – the who, what, where, when and why
behind the event. On Sept. 11, it was a challenge for journalists
to pull together even that basic information for such an expected
tragedy.
In the days and weeks that followed, the coverage expanded to look
at the broader implications of the attacks – and the personal
impacts those attacks had on Americans.
In “How We’ve Changed,” ABCNEWS.com’s Geraldine
Sealey tells about the experiences of everyday Americans in the
wake of Sept. 11. The story is based on responses to an online invitation
that ABCNEWS.com posted on its Web site, asking readers to share
their stories and the impact of Sept. 11 on their lives.
Many respondents talked about major life changes they’d made.
Some had changed careers or moved their family in the month since
the attacks; others decided to reconsider their relationships:
For some, change is tangible – a marriage proposal, a resignation letter, a postponement of parenthood. For many others who haven’t reorganized their lives, Sept. 11 may have planted seeds of change to come. They are reevaluating priorities, rediscovering faith and patriotism, reconnecting with family and friends, and confronting fear and depression.
The story is filled with personal anecdotes from readers, and it gives those anecdotes context by talking with psychologists, therapists and spiritual advisers. Though many of the experts agreed that it was unwise to make major decisions in the immediate wake of such a catastrophe, many respondents said they could view their lives with a better focus:
Ty Gregory of Toledo, Ohio, has dated his girlfriend on and off for 15 years. He had long planned to propose marriage but never did. Then came Sept. 11.
Through tears and anguish watching news reports of the terror attacks, it became clear that life could not wait, Gregory says.
“It made me think, ‘Man, we don’t know how long we’ll be here,’” said Gregory, 32, an information systems specialist. “I really felt like I wasted a lot of time in my life and there isn’t a lot more to be wasted.” He popped the question, she said yes, and the couple will marry early next year.
The story provides a unique snapshot into the lives
of many Americans coping with the terrorist attacks. Sealey pulled
the story together in two weeks using more than 1,000 sources.
Judges were impressed that the staff of ABCNEWS.com used their site
to attract such a wide range of sources.
“This was a very compelling entry showing the ‘back
story’ of Sept. 11,” wrote the judges. “ABCNEWS.com
leveraged the strengths of the Internet as a news storytelling tool
to present a deep portrait of Americans trying to deal with the
aftermath of a national tragedy.”
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MSN Money, Why Enron Investors Are Running for the Exits
Text from this entry
Last November, when Jon Markman wrote about Enron investors for MSN Money, his stories connected
with readers in ways that other coverage had not.
Markman explained the complicated issue in terms that hit home with
readers. He suggested a course of action, and he did it in a readable
manner. He explained how Enron’s accounting methods were making
institutional investors nervous, and how the company had much more
outstanding debt than the public realized. While other outlets were
still reporting that Enron would probably be saved by a merger,
Markman’s report was one of the first to note that Enron shareholders
were about to lose it all.
“This story is remarkable in its detail explaining the underpinnings
of the Enron story,” said the judges. “The author did
a fine job of explaining how this company edged into bankruptcy,
and doing it in a clear, yet complete manner. While this entry did
not make extensive use of multimedia components unique to the Web,
it did do a good job of explaining a very complicated business story.”
Markman researched and reported the story in only two days, and
his readers were appreciative. “Your report on Enron saved
me from a huge loss!” wrote one reader.
“I try to always offer specific actions that readers can consider
to take advantage of my ideas if they think they have merit, including
specific stocks or indexes to buy or short,” said Markman.
“In that way the columns tend to be more practical than those
of my peers, and may account for much of their success. And when
I look back, I am glad to see they were on the mark throughout a
turbulent year.”
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