The Reporting Project staff won seven awards in the Cleveland Press Club’s “All Ohio Excellence in Journalism” contest, including a first-place award for weather reporting.
Reporter Emma Baum earned the first place honor for her reporting about gaps in the National Weather Service radar system that leave some parts of the country vulnerable to severe weather without warning.
Baum wrote the story in June 2024 after a tornado with winds up to 130 mph ripped through the Muskingum County village of Frazeysburg. There were no sirens of alerts for Frazeysburg residents because of what some say are “blind spots” in the nation’s radar system.
Remarkably, no one was killed and residents whose homes were destroyed escaped without serious injuries.
Read more: Blind spots in weather radar system may leave some central Ohio areas vulnerable
Judges in the Cleveland Press Club contest wrote that Baum and The Reporting Project provided “an important story that reminds us why investing in weather technology and the NWS is so critical. This is the type of piece that not only serves as an important warning to people who live in this zone, but it could also drive change that improves the chances of detecting the next tornado.”
In a follow-up story two months later, Baum wrote about the challenges displaced Frazeysburg residents were facing in rebuilding their homes and their lives.
The Press Club Awards were presented on June 6 in Cleveland.
Judges in the contest also awarded The Reporting Project Managing Editor Julia Lerner with two second-place awards – one for Best Website in Ohio, and one for Best Newsletter. The website is available free to everyone, and the newsletter, which also is free, is emailed each Thursday to highlight news and feature stories produced by the staff that week.
Second place awards also went to Andrew Theophilus and Owen Baker in the Sports Feature category for “Rust and Rubber,” their video documentary of an amateur auto drag-racing team.
“We’re thrilled that Emma Baum’s investigation of gaps in the weather radar system was honored with a first-place award,” Lerner said. “The problem still persists, and highlighting the blind spots a year later might help remind people with the authority to make improvements that lives are still at risk.”
“We enter contests such as this one not in the student categories but in the professional categories because our staff strives daily to report local news at the highest standards,” Lerner said. “We are grateful for the recognition of that work by our peers in the profession.”
Third-place awards went to Alan Miller in the Architecture & Design reporting category for his stories about the renovation of the historic Licking County Courthouse; to Sarah Sollinger in the Education reporting category for her coverage of a Newark middle-school principal’s handling of complaints about bullying; and to Noah Fishman in the Government & Politics category for his coverage of the “camping ban” targeting unsheltered people in Newark.
Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.