2024 Investigative & Public Service (Small Newsroom) Winners

About the Winners:

Texas’s deadliest school bus crash in nearly a decade happened last year when a cement pumper truck with a driver who shouldn’t have been on the road slammed into a school bus full of 44 pre-kindergarten students and 11 chaperones. A 5-year-old boy died as did a driver following behind. The crash injured most students, some severely. The trauma of the day still runs deep.

What happened was more than a tragic accident. It represents failures at the federal, state and local levels. The reporting team revealed how a school district’s decision to deploy a bus without seat belts likely contributed to injuries and death; how a lack of regulation – and reduced enforcement of the regulations that were in place – left a dangerous driver on the road; and how after the crash, families were left to fend for themselves because of a lack of programs and services to help them emotionally heal.

Comments From the Judges:

“A powerful investigation that shows how a senseless and deadly bus crash was preventable while also prioritizing the perspectives of the families who lived through it. Beautifully written and deeply reported. First story was really powerful narrative and accountability story-telling. Well done series taking on multiple gaps in oversight, including lack of seatbelts on buses and poor inspections of commercial vehicles on the road.”

“I was impressed by several aspects of this investigation: the deep sourcing with families and centering their stories; the excellent use of public records and analyzing the data related to buses with seat belts, inspections and more; and the 360 approach to the questions of what went wrong and what could have prevented this tragedy. I feel that a lot of outlets may have stopped with the record of the driver. But this team did a deep dive into bus safety and why districts haven’t kept up with the 2017 seat belt law, the hidden cost of therapy for the traumatized families, reporting that required a lot of trust.”

Photo credit: Jay Janner & Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman