Kayla Canne of the Asbury Park Press, a team from WBEZ Chicago and freelancer Mya Frazier writing in the New York Times Magazine have won the National Press Foundation’s 2022 awards honoring journalism about poverty and inequality in the United States.
Connor Sheets, formerly of Alabama.com, and Priscilla Thompson of NBC News Now won honorable mention.
“The winners of NPF’s poverty reporting awards are proof that journalism can make a difference by shining a light on the burdens and traumas of everyday life for low-income families,” said NPF’s President Emeritus and judge Sandy K. Johnson.
Canne won for a searing investigation into how New Jersey’s program intended to provide housing to low-income families instead boosts segregation and ignores landlords who turn away vulnerable tenants.
The story about Section 8 housing discrimination was one in a series by Canne that also included a deep dive into how local, state and federal officials ignore mold in taxpayer-funded housing complexes. It won the prize for best work published by a small newsroom with fewer than 50 staff.
WBEZ Chicago won for a multimedia package called “Drowning in Debt” led by Reporter María Inés Zamudio, data and visuals reporter Charmaine Runes, data editor Matt Kiefer and editor Alden Loury. They showed how tens of thousands of Chicago residents – primarily in Black neighborhoods – find themselves unable to pay their rising water bills and face serious legal consequences as a result. The city has more than 220,000 delinquent accounts with more than $421million owed. Zamudio chronicled the life of a woman who received a surprise water bill for $1,100 –a billing error that eventually resulted in a lien against her home.
National Press Foundation judges Jesse Holland, Kenneth Cooper and Johnson hailed the WBEZ package as a example of journalism that is both compelling and complete. The work included photography by Manuel Martinez, graphics by Mary Hall and data visualization by Charmaine Runes. It was published in English and Spanish and won in the category for newsroom with 150 or fewer staff.
Mya Frazier, a freelance writer in Columbus, Ohio, claimed the prize for large newsroom competitors for a New York Times magazine piece titled “When No Landlord Will Rent to You, Where Do You Go?”
Frazier chronicled how single-room occupancy hotels are becoming permanent – and expensive – housing of last resort for the poor, those with bad credit, and tenants stigmatized by a former eviction.
The judges singled out two other stories for special recognition.
In a 4 minutes 33 second video story, Priscilla Thompson of NBC News Now tackled racism in real estate. She showed how a Black homeowner in Indianapolis received a low home appraisal, then saw her home more than double in value after she expunged family photos from her home and got a white friend to pretend he owned the property during another appraisal. Connor Sheets in AL.com found more than a dozen cases of people who were arrested and jailed for unpaid court debts. Imprisonment for failure –or inability– to pay court-ordered fines, fees or restitution is against the law in most places but common practice in the South, Sheets reported. (Sheets is now a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.)
These are the third round of NPF awards launched in 2020 to honor journalists tackling underreported issues of poverty and inequality in the United States.
The 2020 awards, were won by Idrees Kahloon of The Economist, for a story on how to measure poverty and Anna Wolfe of Mississippi Today for a piece on how the schoolchildren of Jackson were coping with the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19. The 2021 awards went to Elizabeth Hlavinka and Shannon Firth of MedPage Today, Amelia Ferrell Knisely of Mountain State Spotlight, and Nigel Duara, Orlando Mayorquin, Jackie Botts, Laurence Du Sault and Kate Cimini for the California Divide.
The Poverty and Inequality Awards are being offered in conjunction with ongoing online trainings for journalists. All of the resources from those trainings can be found here. Both the awards and the trainings are funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Heising-Simons Foundation; NPF is solely responsible for the content.
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