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NEWS
AL.com staff was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting for an investigation of predatory policing in Brookside that led to removal of police officers, changes in state law, dismissal of court cases and people freed from jail.
Columnist John Archibald broke the story, and worked with investigative reporter Ashley Remkus, data reporter Ramsey Archibald and editor Challen Stephens to publish dozens of follow-up stories in 2022. John and Ashley were part of the team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.
AL.com columnist Kyle Whitmire won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his series “State of Denial.” Throughout 2022, Kyle explored larger questions: What made Alabama the way it is and why can’t the state snap out of it? State of Denial seeks to show how 150 years of whitewashed history and a rigged political system have left the state stunted.
The Online News Association named AL.com and Reckon as finalists for the prestigious Knight Award for Public Service in the Online Journalism Awards, recognizing reporting that examined policing for profit in Alabama.
The reporting series, Banking on Crime, exposed a rogue police force in the tiny north Alabama town of Brookside and examined an ankle monitor program that charged defendants $10 per day in Baldwin County along the Gulf Coast. Reckon worked with AL.com, its sister site, to produce Pulled Over/Pulled Under, an accompanying documentary that examined the historical connections between race, oppression and criminalization in the South.
Documentary Pulled Over/Pulled Under is a finalist for ONA Digital Video Storytelling, Long Form, Small/Medium Newsroom and recently was selected to be in the Sidewalk Film Festival.
Reporter Amy Yurkanin earned first place in health policy reporting from the Association of Healthcare Journalists for her work on The TennCare Trap: How one state’s war on Medicaid fraud ensnares working moms in Alabama. Her in-depth work explored the absurd world of women who live on a state border and were arrested for taking a sick child to a doctor in Tennessee and filling out a form incorrectly. Some women, after losing jobs and being displayed in local news reports, told Yurkanin they were afraid of all doctors.
AL.com was a finalist in the prestigious freedom of information category of the 2021 Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards, as the association recognized the dogged work of reporter Ashley Remkus and editor Challen Stephens to procure bodycam footage of controversial police shootings in Huntsville, Alabama, over the strenuous objections and repeated denials of the city. The AL.com team was specifically cited for its fight for public records in the case of Huntsville Police Officer William Darby, who the city paid to defend in court, without releasing the video. He was convicted of murder.
In addition to their bodycam footage work, reporter Ashley Remkus and editor Challen Stephens also submitted the city of Huntsville for the Golden Padlock by IRE, recognizing the least transparent and most uncooperative public agency in the nation. And Huntsville won, with manifest secrecy around police that topped the lack of transparency by others including the FDA, Utah prisons and the state of Arizona.
The Alabama Education Lab and a national collaborative of other education journalists won a Headliners Award for coverage of solutions to help more children read.
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Alabama Media Group lands multiple awards, 12 Southeast Emmy nominations
The Alabama Media Group’s video team has won third place honors in an international journalism competition, and picked up 12 Southeast Emmy Awards nominations while editorial cartoonist J.D. Crowe has been named this year’s winner of the national Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for editorial cartoons.