The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s multistate investigation into sexual abuse among separatist Amish and Mennonite communities, reported in the “Coverings” series last year, has been awarded the G. Richard Dew Award in the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association’s 2020 Keystone Media Awards contest.
The series started with a single email query to Post-Gazette religion editor Peter Smith asking the newspaper to look into the issue. Over the next six months, Mr. Smith, former Post-Gazette public safety reporter Shelly Bradbury and photographer Stephanie Strasburg did the research, met victims and reported on dozens of cases of childhood sexual abuse and criminal cover-up.
The Dew award is given to an individual or organization that has made an outstanding contribution to the community through articles that demonstrate improvement in the quality of community life, enhancement of public understanding of the role of the news media and journalistic responsiveness to matters of public interest.
Earlier this year, the stories also were honored with the national Religion Communicators Council’s Wilbur Awards for faith-related reporting.
In addition to the Dew Award, the Post-Gazette won 16 first-place, nine second-place awards and six honorable mentions for reporting, photography and video, editorial writing and page design in the 2020 Keystone contest.
The strong showing also made the Post-Gazette the sweepstakes winner among Pennsylvania’s largest newspapers, an award that goes to news companies winning the highest total points in each division.
First-place winners were: news beat reporting — Kate Giammarise — Poverty; news feature story — Tim Grant, “A Grave Burden”; business or consumer story — Daniel Moore, “Can an Indian conglomerate bring back American steel?”; editorial — Karen Kane, “Put patients first”; “UPMC’s irony of ironies”; and “The ticking clock”; and column — Brian O’Neill, “The woes of an aging clown”; “Raising a glass for Froggy’s”; and “Praying for grace with Slim Forsythe.”
Other first-place winners were: sports/outdoor column — Joe Starkey, “Don’t ever forget what Phil Kessel did for the Penguins”; “Would Bob Nutting sell the Pirates (please)”; and “The NFL should have come down on Antonio Brown before now; sports enterprise — Stephen Nesbitt and Jessie Wardarski, “My Story is Over: At 16, depression and gender dysphoria nearly broke Colby Love. Now he’s back in the pool and swimming toward his future.”
In photo and design categories, first-place awards went to: news event photo — Stephanie Strasburg, “Mennonites, Amish facing growing recognition of widespread sexual abuse in their communities”; feature photo — Alexandra Wimley, “As a storied program ends, students with physical disabilities at Edinboro U. face a painful choice: what happens to them now?”; sports feature photo — Alexandra Wimley, “WPIAL Class 6A final: Fourth-quarter field goal gives Central Catholic win over Pine-RIchland”; sports action photo — Steph Chambers, “Handoff”; photo story/essay — Stephanie Strasburg, “Coverings”; sports page design — Steve Ziants, “The decade that was 2010-2019 Pittsburgh Steelers, Pirates, Penguins”; graphic/photo illustration — Daniel Marsula, “The special misogyny reserved for mothers”; news video — Andrew Rush, “Day of Loss”; and features video — Steph Chambers, “On the Rebound.”
Second-place winners were: breaking news — PG Staff; feature story — Tim Grant; personality profile — Dan Gigler; news event photo — Andrew Rush; headline writing — Arthi Subramaniam; graphic/photo illustration — Ed Yozwick, Chance Brinkman-Sull, James Hilston, Daniel Marsula; news video — Jessie Wardarski, Andrew Rush; features videos — Steph Chambers; and diversity — Joyce Gannon.
Honorable mentions went to: business or consumer story — Anya Sostek; column — David Templeton; sports breaking news/event coverage — Jason Mackey, Bill Brink, Nubyjas Wilborn; breaking news photo — Alexandra Wimley; graphic/photo illustration — Daniel Marsula; and special section — PG Business Staff.
First Published: May 3, 2020, 3:05 a.m.
