I've been reading entries in the McClatchy President's Award contest, work done in the first six months of 2008: hospital fraud, exploitation of illegal immigrant workers in poultry operations, government abuse at Guantanamo, disastrous lack of regulation in construction trades, a covered-up sexual harassment case in a mayor's race, hundreds of millions of dollars wasted at a state mental health program ... and many more.
I don't know which will win awards (I am not the main judge) but I know it's a powerful body of compelling, important public service journalism, and I'm proud to be associated with the folks who produced it.
You know, Pro Publica (God love them) might not do this much accountability journalism in a year. And almost nobody else but newspapers is even trying.
"One that's understandable..."
ReplyDelete(fixed the link)
re "the Sac Bee has been giving this short shrift..." - I didn't know about Tom Knudson's Sierra Summit blog.
ReplyDeleteNo love for all the blowout coverage of the Calverts missing persons case here on Hilton Head, not even a little?. Sigh... I guess we'll have to wait until the College World Series comes around
ReplyDelete"almost nobody else but newspapers is even trying"
ReplyDeleteShall we give Mother Jones some credit?
I think I'm gonna buy about 17 subscriptions to that magazine.
God bless Mother Jones, the New Yorker, Atlantic and a few other who do extensive journalism.
ReplyDeleteMother Jones has about 180,000 circulation.
Howard, Packeteer's comment brings to mind a question:
ReplyDeleteIs there a site that rounds up all the submissions? Or maybe you could create an entry here (or anyone could do it on the wiki) where people could link to their submissions? I'd like seeing what else people love showing off as their best work.
It's by no means perfect, but here's a Caspio databases I threw together that we can use to archive entries (no idea if I can use HTML here or not)
ReplyDeletePresident's Awards Entry
Here's the bulk of ours, though you wont' get the full feel of it since our Web site has yet to get the necessary fixes to compete in this digital era (hint hint). http://www.islandpacket.com/calverts/
ReplyDeleteWay to go only awarding the larger newspapers. That says a lot for the company's opinion of the smaller news outlets.
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