The Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting team has been honored with a number of new awards for projects that uncovered opiates being handed out “like candy” to veterans, the nation’s failure to connect the missing and unidentified dead, dangerous conditions for oil field workers in North Dakota, and a culture of secrecy and alleged sex abuse in the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization.
The list includes five first-place and two third-place National Headliner Awards, created by the Press Club of Atlantic City in 1934 and billed as “one of the oldest and largest annual contests recognizing journalistic merit.”
Reporter Aaron Glantz’s Candy Land: The Tomah VA won first-place awards in two categories – health and science, as well as radio broadcast. Another of Glantz’s stories – about questionable efforts by the for-profit University of Phoenix to recruit veterans, which was done along with Adithya Sambamurthy and Richard Coolidge for PBS NewsHour – won first place in broadcast television.
Reporter G.W. Schulz’s Left for Dead – which included work from Michael Corey, Michael I Schiller and Michael Montgomery – took two first-place Headliner Awards in the categories of journalistic innovation and broadcast radio. The radio piece won the grand prize — of which there is only one awarded in each medium.
Other Headliner Awards included third place in broadcast radio for “Culture of secrecy leaves door open for sex abuse” by Trey Bundy, Delaney Hall and Sambamurthy and third place in broadcast television for “Why North Dakota’s oil fields are so deadly for workers” by Jennifer Gollan, David Ritsher and Coolidge, for PBS NewsHour.
Reveal also is being recognized as an honoree at the 20th Annual Webby Awards in the category of online documentary video. According to the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which sponsors the Webbys, the honoree distinction is given to the top 20 percent out of 13,000 entries for work that “exhibits remarkable achievement.” The recognition was for Reveal’s “The Dead Unknown” documentary, which accompanied our Left for Dead series.
Meanwhile, the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation has announced that Candy Land: The Tomah VA is a finalist for its award in television and radio journalism.