Dogged reporting on the anti-pipeline protests at Standing Rock and an exposé of discrimination in the temp industry won awards honoring civil rights journalism from Columbia Journalism School.
Jenni Monet, a freelance reporter who was arrested and charged with trespassing while covering the Standing Rock protests, won the Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award, which “recognizes outstanding achievements in reporting on racial or religious hatred, intolerance or discrimination in the United States.” It was created in 1959 to honor New York Herald Tribune reporter Paul Tobenkin.
Monet wrote about the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation protests for Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and other outlets. She covered the clashes between Native American activists and an “increasingly militarized police force” that used mass arrests, rubber bullets and tear gas – as well as the political and cultural context in North Dakota.
We were awarded a special citation for our investigation into how employers outsourced hiring discrimination to temp agencies, some of which used code words to screen job applicants by race, age and sex. Whether it was a preference for white or Latino workers, black job seekers were usually hit the hardest. A companion radio episode revealed how far one Alabama-based temp agency went to please its customers.
Other stories in the series dug into temp industry lobbying that killed a reform effort and tracked down a temp agency that evaded government enforcement efforts.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission launched an investigation into the company at the center of Reveal’s work, and announced a new focus on discrimination in the temp industry.
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