Express-News journalists had been honored with first-place awards for storytelling, editorial writing and enterprise reporting in the Texas Managing Editors’ annual Excellence in Journalism contest.
Vincent T. Davis, writer of the paper’s weekly San Antonio Stories column, received the coveted Michael Brick Storytelling Award for “elegant, insightful, closely observed stories about an everyday person or people.”
Cary Clack received first place in editorial writing, and Patrick Danner took the first-place prize for enterprise reporting.
Overall, Express-News reporters, photographers, web page designers, digital producers and different employees members collected 24 awards in the competitors, which acknowledged work revealed in 2021. The outcomes had been introduced Saturday on the Texas Managing Editors’ conference in Irving.
The prize-winning journalism included a five-part collection on home violence in San Antonio, protection of the heightened move of migrants into Texas through the first yr of the Biden administration and articles documenting the environmental destruction brought on by stone quarries in the Texas Hill Country.
‘Fine writing, detailed reporting’
Davis, a reporter on the paper’s metro employees, spent 22 years in the Air Force earlier than embarking on a profession in journalism. He is understood for writing intimate portraits of what he calls “everyday people.”
The Michael Brick award is called for a Texas journalist who wrote for the New York Times, Houston Chronicle, Express-News and different newspapers earlier than his loss of life in 2016 at age 41. The award acknowledges “fine writing, detailed reporting, voice, empathy and surprise,” qualities for which Brick was admired.
The 5 tales in Davis’ successful entry included profiles of Nettie Hinton, an African American educator and civil rights activist, and a 96-year-old barber named Andy Banda, who was closing his store after 70 years.
Hinton grew up in San Antonio beneath Jim Crow, and Davis’ profile vividly evoked a not-so-distant time when Blacks had been required to sit down in the again of buses and pay a ballot tax and had been allowed into Playland Park, with its famed curler coaster, on Tuesdays solely.
In his profile of Banda, Davis described how the sight of barber chairs bolted to a tile flooring and a field of magazines “swept me back in time to my childhood” and to a Georgia barber store the place his great-grandfather took him for haircuts.
“As he and fellow veterans, church deacons and brickyard-working men solved the ills of the world, I’d flip through periodicals like Argosy, Ebony, and Popular Mechanics fanned out on a table like a gambler’s hand of cards,” Davis wrote.
‘Eloquent, even poetic’
Clack, a columnist and member of the Express-News editorial board, was honored for a choice of 5 editorials on subjects starting from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol to new legal guidelines in Texas and different states limiting mail balloting and polling place hours.
Writing on deadline concerning the siege of the Capitol, Clack mentioned it “may have been the lowest, most shameful moment for an American president.” He requested: “But what about those who have looked the other way, kept quiet and enabled (then-President Donald Trump) as he acted on his delusional and authoritarian impulses?”
In one other editorial, Clack blamed Texas leaders previous and current for the implications of Winter Storm Uri, which left tens of millions of Texans with out electrical energy, warmth and water for days. “This was a crisis unleashed by the unharnessed power of nature, then magnified by the consequences of past policy decisions and poor leadership,” he wrote.
The contest judges mentioned of Clack’s work: “The arguments are clear, strong and persuasive. The writing is eloquent, even poetic.”
‘Keeping a watchful eye’
Danner was acknowledged for an article a couple of private harm lawyer’s declare to have received a $1.25 billion judgment for a sufferer of sexual assault. Lawyer Thomas J. Henry marketed the declare on an enormous billboard alongside Interstate 35 in downtown San Antonio.
Danner’s story revealed what the billboard omitted: The assault sufferer by no means obtained any cash.
A choose had granted Henry’s request for the massive award after the defendant in the case, a youth baseball coach, failed to seem for trial in December 2018. As Danner reported, Henry didn’t file for a lien on the defendant’s property or take different steps to gather on the judgment.
Henry didn’t publicly tout the award till 2021, when the State Bar of Texas eased its guidelines on promoting, eradicating the requirement that attorneys disclose the “net to client” of any judgment or verdict they promote.
Danner’s article prompted a State Bar committee to advocate that the Texas Supreme Court shut the loophole, and in January the courtroom ordered attorneys to reveal in ads the quantities truly obtained by purchasers.
The contest judges lauded Danner for “keeping a watchful eye on a prominent Texas figure.”
Photography, design, deadline reporting honored
Express-News journalists received second-place honors in 5 classes: Adrian Alvarez in designer of the yr, Mike Finger in sports activities column writing, Dudley Althaus in specialty reporting, Lisa Krantz in characteristic pictures, and Jacob Beltran and Taylor Pettaway in breaking news.
Alvarez, the paper’s artwork director, was acknowledged for compelling front-page designs of Express-News studies on home violence, homelessness, the assault on the U.S. Capitol and different main tales.
Beltran and Pettaway had been honored for his or her deadline reporting on a capturing at a West Side automotive meet in which a 6-year-old lady was killed.
Althaus, a particular correspondent for the Express-News, was acknowledged for vivid dispatches from the U.S.-Mexico border in which he described the hardships endured by migrants, their causes for making the harmful journey, the position of smugglers and the efforts of the Border Patrol to deal with the inflow.
Krantz was acknowledged for pictures that illustrated the extraordinary devotion of Deona Jo “DJ” Sutterfield to her son Zach, who suffered extreme burns and different accidents in a 2018 fireplace at an condo advanced in San Marcos.
Sutterfield give up her job to be at her son’s aspect as he obtained medical therapy for 17 months in San Antonio, greater than 200 miles from her house in San Angelo. She was named 2021 Texas Mother of the Year by the nationwide nonprofit American Mothers Inc.
Finger was acknowledged for columns that captured indelible moments in San Antonio sports activities: Spurs coach Gregg Popovich’s success of a dream in guiding the U.S. males’s basketball staff to an Olympic gold medal, Spurs star Tim Duncan’s induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the University of Texas at San Antonio’s first Conference USA soccer championship.
‘Nowhere to Hide’ collection acknowledged
Emilie Eaton and Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje received third-place honors in the star investigative report of the yr class for “Nowhere to Hide,” their collection on home violence in San Antonio.
The collection additionally received third place in star on-line bundle of the yr for the work of Eaton, Stoeltje, graphics reporter Ryan Serpico, digital producer Angela Alcala-Bach, graphic artist Monte Bach, digital viewers analyst Joy Marie Scott and Randi Stevenson, govt producer of ExpressNews.com.
Express-News employees members received third-place honors in six extra classes: Brian Chasnoff in star reporter of the yr, Jeff McDonald in each the sports activities characteristic and star sportswriter of the yr classes, Jessica Phelps in star photojournalist of the yr, Nancy M. Preyor-Johnson in star opinion author of the yr and Nancy Floeck Wilson in headline writing.
Eight Express-News journalists received honorable point out: Chasnoff for star investigative report of the yr; restaurant critic Mike Sutter for remark and criticism; meals author Chuck Blount in the identical class; columnist Elaine Ayala in normal column writing; Ryan Serpico in informational graphics; Marvin Pfeiffer and freelancer Sam Grenadier in sports activities pictures; and Lauren Caruba in characteristic writing.
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