Reveal/CIR wins 3 national Sigma Delta Chi awards

Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has been honored with three Sigma Delta Chi Awards from the Society for Professional Journalists.

Reveal’s Left for Dead investigation won the award for public service by an online independent organization. The multiplatform project is the first national examination of John and Jane Does and the failure of law enforcement officials and coroners to identify unclaimed and unnamed bodies. The project includes an app designed to help match the missing and the unidentified dead, an episode for our public radio show and podcast, a long-form text piece and a three-part documentary series.

Here’s what the judges had to say:

With an easy-to-use database that pairs data on the missing with data of unidentified bodies, The Center for Investigative Reporting has created a way to expedite the identification of Jane and John Does. The database is open to the public and encourages web sleuths to look for matches and to alert law enforcement.

The national look of those missing by G.W. Schulz of Reveal sheds light on a problem called “the nation’s silent mass disaster.” With troves of documents, medical reports and investigative files and interviews with law enforcement and families, Schulz details the agony of families as they wonder what happened to their missing loved one. The documentary takes a viewer through an exhumation of a Jane Doe.

Reveal deserves the Public Service award for creating the first national account of those missing throughout America, and for creating a database that shares clues where the public can help assist in matching unidentified bodies with those reported missing.

To date, the app has resulted in over 250 possible matches.

Rape on the Night Shift, a multiplatform project examining the sexual abuse faced by janitors, was awarded the prize for outstanding online investigative reporting.

The project was a collaboration among Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, KQED, FRONTLINE and Univision. Produced in both English and Spanish, the project included long-form text pieces, television documentaries, several radio segments and radio documentaries.

The project was reported and produced by Bernice Yeung and Daffodil Altan of Reveal, Andres Cediel and Lowell Bergman at the Investigative Reporting Program, and Sasha Khokha at KQED.

Since Rape on the Night Shift debuted, a California lawmaker has introduced a bill to protect janitors from sexual violence, and the country’s largest janitorial company has agreed to an outside review of its California employees’ rape claims.

Post Script, a three-part series examining how some of mankind’s brightest ideas wound up taking an abrupt turn from their original design, was honored for best online digital video.

The series was directed and produced by Ariane Wu and executive produced by Amanda Pike. The stories were based on reporting by Michael Corey of Reveal and independent journalist and author Murray Carpenter. Motion graphics and illustrations were produced by Sam Ward, Anna Vignet, Richard Levien and Naissance.

The judges said:

The submission is a well-produced collection of videos on interesting topics told through engaging visuals and graphics that make it feel “of the web.” They have lots of entry points, great storytelling and their webpage presents them all well.

Dating back to 1932, the Sigma Delta Chi awards recognize the best of print, radio, television and online journalism.