The Scripps Howard Foundation awards journalists and broadcasters for their groundbreaking work from the previous year. The finalists were announced in a press release Tuesday morning (Feb. 25). Out of 897 entries, finalists in 15 categories were selected.
The panel, made up of veteran journalists and media industry leaders got together at the Poynter Institute Feb. 20-21 to judge competition entries. The Scripps Howard Award will give $170,000 in prize money to the winning organization.
The Washington Post had seven finalists over six categories. ProPublica was selected as a finalist for its reporting projects with its Local Reporting Network. The Houston Chronicle, National Public Radio and The Associated Press were also among the selected.
The 2019 finalists are:
Breaking News:
Los Angeles Times – "Death off the Santa Barbara Coast"
The Washington Post – "The El Paso - Dayton Shooting"
San Francisco Chronicle – "Wildfire and Blackouts in Northern California"
Broadcast – Local Coverage:
WFAA-TV (Dallas) – "Verify Road Trip: Climate Truth"
KARE-TV (Minneapolis) – "KARE 11 Investigates: Mission Critical"
KNXV-TV (Phoenix) – "Unlocked and Unsafe"
Broadcast – National/International Coverage:
Al Jazeera – "The War on Afghan Women"
VICE News Tonight – "They Come For Us At Night: China's Vanishing Muslims"
FRONTLINE PBS – "Flint's Deadly Water"
Business/Financial Reporting:
The Seattle Times – "Boeing's 737 MAX Crisis"
ProPublica – "The TurboTax Trap"
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – "Turned Away"
Community Journalism:
Missoulian (Missoula, Montana) – "Troubled Kids, Troubled System"
MLK50: Justice Through Journalism (Memphis, Tennessee) and ProPublica – "Profiting From The Poor"
Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News – "Lawless"
Environmental Reporting:
The Associated Press – "What Can Be Saved?"
The Oregonian/OregonLive (Portland) – "Polluted By Money"
The Seattle Times – "Hostile Waters: Orcas in Peril"
Distinguished Service to the First Amendment:
Orlando (Florida) Sentinel – "Florida's Fading Sunshine Laws"
The Post and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina) – "'IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO DIE': How Flaws in the South Carolina Prison System Led to 7 Deaths in a Single Night"
Bay Area News Group and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley with McClatchy, MediaNews Group, USA Today Network, Voice of San Diego and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting – "California's Criminal Cops"
Human Interest Storytelling:
The Washington Post – "Lives of Everyday Americans"
The Washington Post – "The State of Health Care in Rural America"
The Wall Street Journal – "The Agony of DNA Testing"
Innovation:
WBEZ Chicago Public Media – "Chicago Mayoral Election Questionnaire"
Newsy – "Newsy+Bellingcat"
The Washington Post – "The Mueller Report"
Investigative Reporting:
ProPublica – "Disaster in the Pacific"
The Washington Post – "The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War"
Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News – "Abuse of Faith"
Multimedia Journalism:
The Marshall Project with The Guardian – "Detained"
The Washington Post – "Gone in a Generation"
Vox – "These 3 Supertrees Can Protect Us From Climate Collapse"
Opinion:
Alabama Media Group – "Life, Politics and Corruption in Alabama"
Kaiser Health News – "America's Broken Health Care System: Columns by Elisabeth Rosenthal"
The New York Times – "America Wasn't a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made it One" by Nikole Hannah-Jones
Radio/Podcast:
American Public Media, APM Reports – "Uprooted"
Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting – "Amazon: Behind the Smiles"
The Public's Radio (Rhode Island) – "A 911 Emergency"
Topic of the Year: The Impact of Climate Change on Communities
The Center for Public Integrity – "One Disaster Away"
NPR and The University of Maryland Howard Center for Investigative Journalism – "Heat and Health in American Cities"
The Boston Globe – "At the Edge of a Warming World"
