In its first full year of publication, FFP bested all newspapers and nonprofit newsrooms in an 8-state region to win three Great Plains Journalism Awards, awarded May 5 in Tulsa.
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The winners:
Beat reporting: Coverage of Nebraska’s prison and parole board.
Reporters Natalia Alamdari and Yanqi Xu won for a series of important stories on Nebraska’s troubled correctional system. Stories in the winning entry included Nebraska parole board’s not showing up for parole hearings, how Nebraska’s overcrowded prison system harms guards and prisoners alike, a violent prisoner’s lack of rehabilitation leading up to a murder and Nebraska’s geriatric prisoners, costing state taxpayers dearly.
Business reporting: An out-of-state company buys up North Omaha
Vinebrook, an Ohio-based, hedge-fund backed company, didn’t own a single piece of property in Omaha three years ago. Now it’s one of the biggest landlords in the city.
Our work with KETV Channel 7 in Omaha exposed the out-of-state company’s buying spree in North Omaha, and showed how it’s changing things for renters and entire neighborhoods.
Feature writing: The skater kids are alright
They built a skate park in the poorest county in Nebraska. And then they watched as Junior did something priceless. FFP Editor Matthew Hansen was there, and his heartwarmer from the Omaha Reservation in northeast Nebraska won the Great Plains award for best feature story.
The Great Plains Journalism Awards, sponsored by the Tulsa Press Club, is an 8-state regional journalism contest open to newsrooms in the states of Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota.
1 Comment
Congratulations all around for FFP! You guys do such solid work and I am pleased the recognition is rolling in. This demonstrates the need and thirst for relevant, pertinent news across this state. FFP is filling the void and meeting the need.