July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams”
Anchor Brian Williams: “This is easily the saddest place in our nation tonight because this place will now be known forever as the scene of the largest mass shooting in U.S. history. … This one single incident will no doubt affect every American student somehow, along with their families.”
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: The Dallas Morning News
These are the faces behind the news, people whose lives have been changed forever: abused youth, broken-hearted parents, beleaguered staff, courageous whistleblowers and committed watchdogs. They were caught up in a scandal that unraveled in early 2007 as The Dallas Morning News began documenting abuses at the state agency created to rehabilitate young offenders.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Jim Litke, The Associated Press
Jim Litke is the face of AP Sports. A bald head. A quick smile. A snappy comeback,” Associated Press Sports Editor Terry Taylor said. “Litke is informed, insightful and just cynical enough, with an easygoing manner that makes people want to talk to him.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Rich Newberg & the News 4 Team, WIVB-TV
Rich Newberg: “In the days ahead, leading up to your new trial, how will you handle it? What will you do, and are you confident your name will be cleared?” Lynn DeJac: “I’m 100 percent confident my name will be cleared.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: The Center for Public Integrity
In six years of reporting on the legislative branch of state governments, the Center for Public Integrity showed how state legislatures put private interests ahead of the public good. With “States of Disclosure: Tracking the Private Interests of Public Officials,” CPI turned its attention to the under-scrutinized executive and judicial branches of state government.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Gene Weingarten,
It was the most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen in Washington,” [passerby Stacy] Furukama says. “Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and were flipping quarters at him! Quarters! I wouldn’t do that to anybody.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Steve Kroft, Ira Rosen, John Solomon & Sumi Agarwal, CBS News-60 Minutes
For 40 years, the FBI relied upon a forensic science called bullet-lead analysis. Based on the belief that the lead in bullets had unique chemical signatures, it was believed possible to break down and analyze and thus match bullets, not only to a singe batch of ammunition coming out of a factory, but to a single box of bullets.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Jerome Aumente, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
Newspapers are in the business of story telling, and this book is a story about the newspapers of New Jersey. In a microcosm, the daily and community newspapers of the Garden State present a wonderful opportunity to examine in vivid detail the rich history, the past challenges and the future transformations confronting the newspaper industry both in New Jersey and throughout the United States.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: The Associated Press
8:12 a.m. EDT APNewsAlert RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) A party aid says Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was injured in a suicide attack and is now undergoing surgery. 8:29 a.m. EDT APNewsAlert FLASH RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) A party aid and a military official say Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto died following a suicide bombing.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Brian Grow, Keith Epstein, Robert Berner & Geri Smith, Business Week
An exhaustive, yearlong
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Debbie Dujanovic & Kelly Just, KSL-TV
This story began as a real estate law article. Home sellers in Utah do not have to disclose whether a house was ever contaminated by meth. The reporters, Debbie Dujanovic and Kelly Just, began knocking on doors to see if homeowners knew their houses might have a dark past.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: The Post & Courier
Two-by-two, Charleston firefighters waded through the belly of the burning furniture store. Swirling black smoke choked the air around them and swallowed all light. Sofas, chairs and bedding blocked their path at every turn. Darkness and confusion enveloped the men. As the blaze turned deadly, calls for help crackled over the fire department’s radios.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Consumer Reports
You might think you don’t have to worry about paying for medical care if you have health insurance. But you would be wrong. Thus begins Consumer Reports’ series on America’s health-care crisis. The initial installment, “Are you really covered?” details the findings of their exclusive national survey of working adults: •29 percent of people who had health insurance were “underinsured.”
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Scott Pelley, Shawn Efran, Philip Ittner & Andy Soto CBS News-60 Minutes
Christians in Iraq are being hunted, murdered and driven from their homes in a wave of ethnic cleansing perhaps more brutal than any in the community’s 2,000-year history. Before the U.S. invasion, Iraq was home to more than a million Christians — a small but thriving minority that Saddam Hussein protected.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Susanne Rust, Meg Kissinger & Cary Spivak, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Now in the news every day, bisphenol A and other endocrine disrupters were the subject of a late fall story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Take a look at your shoes, your shampoo, your carpet. Your baby’s bottles, even the dental sealants in your mouth.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Mine Safety & Health News
I could not believe what I was seeing on CNN news and reading on MSHA’s website: a television crew and accompanying reporters, and family members, being allowed inside the Crandall Canyon Mine to view the rescue operations. What were MSHA and mine owner Robert Murray thinking when they allowed these non-rescue personnel into the mine?
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Brad Hicks, WITI-TV
In November 2005, the heroin overdose death of a teenage girl in the quiet suburban town of Cedarburg, Wis., stunned the entire community. No one ever imagined kids in Cedarburg were doing heroin. Her death was followed by others, in Cedarburg and in other suburban towns.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: The Post & Courier
The Charleston, S.C., Sofa Super Store fire was still smoldering when Executive Editor Bill Hawkins and his team at The Post and Courier began their investigation. Nine firefighters had died in the blaze, the largest single loss of firefighters’ lives since 9/11.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: John Moore, Getty Images
Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan after eight years in exile and survived a suicide bomb blast during her arrival procession in Karachi. Her Dec. 27 campaign rally in Rawalpindi was her largest event, drawing thousands of supporters. Departing the rally, she came out into the open road, waving from the sunroof of her armored vehicle.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Kyra Phillips, Mark Nelson, Steve Robinson & Robert Howell, CNN
In the summer, “CNN: Special Investigation Unit” began to document the story of Jena, La. Long before 20,000 marchers converged on this small town, SIU was there meeting with the families and officials caught up in the chain of racially charged events and court cases stemming from the hanging of nooses in the high school courtyard.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Loretta Tofani, The Salt Lake Tribune
Wei Chaihua, 44, left his pristine life in rural China to make his fortune in the city. In Foshan, China, he worked in a factory that made parts for Char-Broil grills and gas stoves — without proper respirator protection. Now he’s dying of silicosis, a lung disease contracted by breathing in silica dust.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Mona Reeder, The Dallas Morning News
Texas politicians celebrate the virtues of small government by touting the Lone Star state’s thriving economy, low cost of living, business-friendly government and booming suburbs. But there’s another side to that story, and photographer Mona Reeder carefully gathered the images to tell it.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Sarah Hill, Scott Schaefer, Stacey Woelfel & Scott Schmidt, KOMU-TV
In the United States, this man would have a wheelchair. But in Vietnam … one of the world’s poorest countries, Thuong Nguyen had to learn to walk without legs. This father of six works as a shoe repairman. He mends worn sandals … though he has no shoes of his own.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Erin Middlewood & Stephanie Rice, The Columbian
Greg Knudtson received a frantic call from his wife, Tomoko: “Emergency, emergency. Jenna quit breathing.” The Vancouver couple had just entrusted their 11-week-old daughter to the family’s child care provider, Jennifer Florentin, when Tomoko returned to work. Florentin had discovered Jenna wasn’t breathing when she went to wake her after an hourslong nap.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Robert Gauthier, Los Angeles Times
Winning the Stanley Cup was just the beginning. Each member of the Anaheim Ducks earned the right to have his name engraved on the most revered trophy in sports and each to celebrate with it for one day this summer. To document how some took this to heart, Times photographer Robert Gauthier traveled across the U.S.,
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: WMAR-TV
For investigative reporter Tisha Thompson, the story began when she was “trying to buy my first home and almost signed up for one of the most dangerous subprime mortgages available, even though my husband and I had nearly perfect credit. I realized, despite my fancy education, I didn’t know anything about how mortgages worked … making me wonder how many other people were getting suckered into buying loans they didn’t want or couldn’t afford.”
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Louise Kiernan, Chicago Tribune
Gerald Whitehead, the oldest member of the trio at 49, had been released from jail just a week before, after being cleared of a heroin-possession charge, the most recent stumble in the struggle to turn his life around after decades of violence and addiction.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Michael P. Ramirez, Investor’s Business Daily
I truly believe in the power of the visual medium,” says Michael Ramirez, cartoonist for Investor’s Business Daily. “People love cartoons. If you do it properly, editorial cartoons can have a significant impact on the political dialogue. “You could say I am trying to save the world from itself.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: WLOX-TV
You can’t see it, but we’re finding it. Remnants of toxic chemicals used to make meth … anhydrous ammonia, lithium, sodium hydroxide … once filled these rooms, coating every inch of a house. Years later, the meth is still there. Could you be living in a former meth lab?
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Alan Prendergast, Westword
When the goon squad showed up at his place at five in the morning, Tommy Silverstein knew something was up. He wasn’t accustomed to greeting guests at such an ungodly hour — much less a team of correction officers, helmeted and suited for action… Silverstein could only think of a couple of reasons why so many well-padded, well-equipped officers would be at his door, ordering him to strip for a search.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Los Angeles Times
According to Graphics Editor Les Dunseith: “The fires began on the morning of Sunday, Oct. 21, and for the next five days, Southern California burned. From the mountains above Santa Barbara to the Mexican border, wildfires raged through suburban subdivisions, mountain resorts, rural enclaves and rarefied beach communities.
July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
Winner: Clarisa Gerlach & Staffs of TBO.com, WFLA-TV & The Tampa Tribune
Jessie Graf returns to the remnants of her house just as darkness falls. The double-wide that once belonged to her parents has been condemned. A blue tarp covers part of the roof, but the back half of the mobile home is open to the elements.
