Palm Beach Post Staff Report
November 6, 2017
Palm Beach Post reporters dominated a statewide newspaper contest Saturday with 10 first-place finishers among 28 finalists in the 66th Florida Press Club Excellence in Journalism Competition presented in Sarasota.
The Post’s “Heroin: Killer of a Generation” special section won the Frances DeVore Award for Public Service. More than a dozen Post staff writers and editors contributed to telling the stories of the 216 people who died from heroin-related overdoses in Palm Beach County in 2015.
“Your online package is simply amazing,” judges wrote. “You demonstrated that opiates are not discriminatory, they don’t have ageism or an agenda, color and religion mean nothing. … Your pictures — especially the wall of photos — tells more than a simple article can. It gave readers the human equation.”
The prize carries a cash award of $1,000.
The heroin package also won the Lucy Morgan In-Depth reporting award, with a set of five stories by reporters Pat Beall, Christine Stapleton, Lawrence Mower and Joe Capozzi. The judges added: “What can one say other than ‘Wow,’ about such an amazing package.”
Stories on misconduct in the sober home industry by Stapleton, John Pacenti and Mower received an honorable mention in the in-depth category.
The Post’s Mike Stucka and Eliot Kleinberg took the Freedom of Information Award for crafting an online scorecard to track legislators’ votes on public records laws. They led the project on behalf of the Florida Society of News Editors and Florida’s First Amendment Foundation. [READ MORE]