NJ Advance Media and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel are the recipients of the 2019 University of Florida Award for Investigative Data Journalism presented annually by the Online News Association (ONA). The $15,000 prize, the largest offered by the ONA, will be shared by the winners.

NJ Advance Media won in the large market newsroom category for “The Force Report” and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel won in the small/medium newsroom category for  “Lessons Lost.”  This is the third time the Journal Sentinel has won in the six-year history of the award. The awards were announced on Sept. 14 in New Orleans at the ONA annual awards ceremony.

“The Force Report” is the result of a 16-month investigation that produced “the most comprehensive statewide database of police use of force in the United States. The first-of-its-kind resource allows readers to search every use of force by local officers and state troopers from 2012 through 2016, the most recent full year then available.” Read more about the series here: https://awards.journalists.org/entries/the-force-report/.

In “Lessons Lost,” reporter Erin Richards’ investigations led to a “massive undertaking by a team at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to obtain and analyze a never-before-released database that tracked student-by-student movement among Wisconsin schools and to illustrate the causes and consequences of churn through the stories of individual families and schools.” Read more about “Lessons Lost” here: https://awards.journalists.org/entries/lessons-lost/

Finalists in the large newsroom category included:

• Copy, Paste, Legislate: The Center for Public Integrity, USA TODAY NETWORK
• Heartbroken: Tampa Bay Times
• Murder with Impunity, The Washington Post

Finalists in small/medium newsroom category included:

• Free to Shoot Again: BuzzFeed News, The Trace
• Hurricane Maria’s Dead: Associated Press, Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism and Quartz
• Vanishing Violence: Inside the Staggering Drop in Serious Youth Crime: San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst

The Investigative Data Journalism Prize was established by a gift from the estate of Lorraine Dingman. Representatives from the winning news organizations will visit the College in the spring as journalists-in-residence to discuss the project and work with both students and faculty on investigative journalism techniques.

To see previous year’s winners, click here: https://wwwtest.jou.ufl.edu/home/about/ona/.

Posted: September 15, 2019
Category: College News
Tagged as: Investigative Data Journalism Award, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, NJ Advance Media, ONA