From "Johanna: Facing Forward." Fabiola Mijangos visits her recovering goddaughter, Johanna Orozco. (Photo Credit: Gus Chan/Cleveland Plain Dealer)
SEATTLE - The Dart Center has announced the selection of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and National Public Radio as the winners of the 2008 Dart Awards for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma.
In addition, WFCR (Amherst, Mass.) and National Public Radio received Honorable Mentions in the radio category.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer received the Dart Award for “Johanna: Facing Forward” (Rachel Dissell, reporter; Gus Chan, photographer). This remarkable nine-day series traced events leading to the 2007 shooting of 18-year-old Johanna Orozco by her 17-year-old boyfriend. Exploring the roots of relationship violence through Johanna's eyes, the series – reported and photographed over six months - particularly struck a chord in Cleveland's Latino community and led to the creation of abuse-awareness programs for teens.
Judges singled out “Johanna: Facing Forward” for its extraordinarily compelling and careful explanation of a teenager’s harrowing experience. They described it as a tour-de-force of narrative writing and photography and called the series poignant, complex and intimate. They commended Dissell and Chan for the compassion, dignity and cultural acuity used in reporting Johanna’s story.
National Public Radio received the Dart Award for "Sexual Abuse of Native American Women" (Laura Sullivan, correspondent; Amy Walters, producer; Maria Godoy, Digital Media Producer), a startling two-part investigative series that opened a new window onto a national disgrace. The series exposed both the fate of women assaulted on reservations, and the web of impunity protecting their assailants.
Judges called “Sexual Abuse of Native American Women” a ground-breaking and powerful expose of an invisible epidemic of rape on reservations, and commended the team for their determination and persistence in the face of tremendous reporting challenges.
The newspaper and radio Dart Award winners each receive $5,000.
In the radio category the judges also awarded Honorable Mentions, carrying no cash prize, to WFCR for “Love, War and PTSD: Peter and Anna Mohan” (Karen Brown, reporter/producer) and to National Public Radio for “Mental Anguish, Injustice, and the Military” (Daniel Zwerdling, correspondent; Anne Hawke, producer).
“Love, War and PTSD” is an innovative and reflective report that traced the relationship of Peter and Anna Mohan as they coped with Iraq veteran Peter's combat PTSD. Told entirely through their voices, without an outside narrator, this two-part series - compiled over six months - offers an unflinching and thorough portrayal of the havoc war can wreak on a marriage and everyday life. Judges called it extremely compelling, beautiful and precise in its depiction of suffering. “Mental Anguish, Injustice, and the Military” is a chilling series of investigative reports that followed up on Zwerdling's 2006 expose of the mistreatment of soldiers who return from Iraq and Afghanistan with serious mental health issues. Judges praised it for its breadth, depth and the enormity of commitment to a critical issue of our time.
This year’s winners and Honorable Mentions will be recognized at a ceremony April 23 at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Other finalists in newspaper reporting included:
Christian Science Monitor -- "Africa’s AIDS Orphans: Two Families Open Their Doors”
Dallas Morning News – “Crackdown on Sex Offenders”
Las Vegas Sun – “Ground Zero: Tom Urbanski’s Story”
Post and Courier – “Price of Violence”
Roanoke Times – “Virginia Tech Shootings”
San Francisco Chronicle – “Hidden Victims of Violence”
San Francisco Weekly – “Escape from San Francisco”
Seattle Post Intelligencer – “One Fatal Shot: A Family Portrait”
Westword – “You Do the Meth”
Other finalists in radio reporting included:
NPR, “Grief Camp Helps Children Cope with Losses”
PRI’s The World, “Rwanda: Trying to Move On”
WUNC/American Public Media, "Korea Comfort Women"
The Dart Awards are administered by the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, based at the University of Washington. Established in 1995, the annual Dart Awards recognize outstanding reporting that portrays traumatic events with accuracy, insight and sensitivity while illustrating the effects of trauma on victims' lives and the process of recovery from emotional trauma.
Screening and final judging are conducted by independent panels combining journalists, mental health professionals and victim advocates. The final judges for this year's Dart Awards were: Gaiutra Bahadur, Nieman Fellow and former reporter, Philadelphia Inquirer; Bettina Edelstein, assistant to the editor, News Technology, The New York Times; Susan Herman, associate professor, Pace University; Jim MacMillan, photojournalist, Philadelphia Daily News; Patricia Resick, Boston University and president-elect of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies; Jake Shapiro, director of Public Radio Exchange (PRX).
Funded by the Dart Foundation of Mason, Mich., the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma is dedicated to improving media coverage of trauma, conflict and tragedy. The Center also addresses the consequences of such coverage for those working in journalism. The Dart Center develops educational resources for use in journalism schools and news organizations, provides training and conducts research about news coverage of violence and trauma.
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