Florida Politics
January 2, 2018
The Miami Herald’s Carol Marbin Miller and former Herald reporter Audra D.S. Burch have won the First Amendment Foundation‘s inaugural Lucy Morgan Award for Open Government Reporting for their series, “Fight Club: Dark secrets of Florida juvenile justice.”
“Miller and Burch secured datasets from four state agencies and analyzed 10 years of data for the series, which revealed systematic chaos, cruelty and human rights violations within some of the state’s juvenile justice institutions,” according to a Monday press release.
The award—named for the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times)—is awarded to reporters “whose work exemplifies the tenacity, drive, and courage that characterizes Morgan.” (Burch, by the way, has since moved to the New York Times.)
The award “honors a Florida journalist who smartly uses public records to report stories exposing corruption, revealing government conflicts of interest or otherwise serving the public interest,” according to the Foundation.
It will be presented at the Foundation’s annual Sunshine Recognition luncheon on Tuesday, Jan. 23, at the Governors Club in Tallahassee. For more information on the luncheon and on other awards that will be given, visit www.floridafaf.org or call (850) 224-4555. [READ MORE]