2023 Collaborations (All Newsroom Sizes) Finalists

Melanie Asmar, Rae Ellen Bichell, Helen Santoro, Jennifer Brown & Tina Griego

Chalkbeat, KFF Health News, Colorado Sun & COLab

Last Resort

• The schools that take Colorado’s ‘most vulnerable’ children are disappearing
• Students in rural Colorado left without options as specialized schools close
• Colorado is pouring more money into schools for kids with behavioral health issues and disabilities, but are they helping?

Comments From the Judges:

“THIS series of stories is doing what the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics calls for: Giving voice to the voiceless and holding those in power accountable. I can clearly see that without all journalists involved in these stories, these stories would not be as good. I hope that the same team will follow up on how the [government] changes work out.”

“Powerful collaborative work and package. I can tell this was a HUGE lift, and it paid off. The work dives deep into the shortcomings of an alternative school system kids and parents rely on and are frequently left without.”

Brandi Kellam, Louis Hansen & Gabriel Sandoval

Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism & ProPublica

Uprooted

• Erasing the “Black spot”: How a Virginia College expanded by uprooting a Black neighborhood
• The university uprooted a Black neighborhood. Then its policies reduced the Black presence on campus.
• Virginia’s public universities have a long history of displacing Black residents

Comments From the Judges:

“A skillfully and deeply reported piece showing the ways race and racism have inflected not just the bricks and mortar, but also the enrollment decisions, staffing, and ethos of an institution, even very recently. The reporting combined on-the-ground, deeply local knowledge and historical sweep and context, as well as useful educational context.”

“Fantastic reporting and a great and substantive deep dive into such important and troubling history. I have no doubt this series was a big lift, and the reporters did it brilliantly.”

Becca Savransky & Asia Fields

Idaho Statesman & ProPublica

State of Disrepair: Inside Idaho’s Crumbling Schools

• Collapsing roofs, broken toilets, flooded classrooms: Inside the worst-funded schools in the nation
• Idaho created a $25 million fund to fix unsafe schools. Why is nobody using it?
• Falling apart: Students and educators in Idaho show us what it’s like when a state fails to fund school repairs

Comments From the Judges:

“Powerful reporting and use of collaborative power to show how antiquated and ill-fitting school bonding and infrastructure policies and funds are leaving so many kids – especially rural kids – in far less equal and safe classrooms. Impactful reporting as well to be at the center of new conversations around school infrastructure and funding.”

“It was shocking and so well documented, with interviews, photos and data, and so well written. It made crumbling buildings a heartbreaking tale and laid out in detail after detail the terrible state of many of Idaho’s school buildings.”