By Donal Brown
The California First Amendment Coalition today announced that the 2009 Sunlight Award has been given to reporter Alexandra Berzon and the Las Vegas Sun for an investigative series of 50 articles on the high rate of accidental deaths among construction workers at a huge casino construction site on the Las Vegas strip. The Sunlight Award, given jointly by CFAC and the Associated Press, recognizes journalistic excellence in news coverage that uses government records obtained through the assertion of freedom of information rights.
Berzon’s 2008 articles for the Sun exposed the high death rate among construction workers caused by lax safety rules and the rush to build quickly. The newspaper reported that 12 workers had died within 18 months. The series resulted in new safety measures that dramatically reduced deaths and other injuries among construction workers.
The same Sun effort also won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, announced earlier this month. The Pulitzer board said the series exposed “the high death rate among construction workers on the Las Vegas Strip amid lax enforcement of regulations, leading to changes in policy and improved safety conditions.”
The CFAC judges praised the series “for the willingness to take on entrenched interests; for the successful use of FOI laws to obtain crucial records; for the effective use of online presentation and interactive features; and for obtaining stunning results: changes in safety practices and enforcement that appear to have made these jobs far safer.”
The Sacramento Bee was a close second-place winner for its extensive investigation of Sacramento’s Child Protective Services agency. Using a new access law, the series demonstrated that changes to the agency prompted by an earlier expose have done little to protect children from serious harm, and even death, caused by criminally abusive parents and other care givers. CFAC judges commended the Bee’s “dogged” pursuit of this important and controversial news story, which has generated multiple investigations.
“The Sun’s and Bee’s stories demonstrate what can happen when enterprising reporters vigorously insist on their rights under access laws,” said former newspaper publisher and long-time CFAC Board member, Rowland Rebele.
The Sun, as winner of the Sunlight award, will receive a prize of $500.
CFAC judges were CFAC board members Rebele; James M. Chadwick, CFAC Board President and attorney with Sheppard Mullin; Paul Gullixson, editorial page editor, Santa Rosa Press Democrat; Edward Davis, San Francisco media lawyer; and Dick Rogers, former reader representative of The San Francisco Chronicle, and Executive Director Peter Scheer. Donal Brown, retired journalism teacher and CFAC volunteer, was also one of the judges.
The Sun’s series also won the top newswriting prize in the Associated Press California/Nevada Newswriting and Photo Contest, celebrating the best print journalism of 2008 by AP member newspapers in the two states.
The AP award to Berzon and the Sun was one of many in the annual AP competition which featured 59 categories across four circulation divisions.
The Las Vegas Sun series can be found at:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/topics/construction-deaths/
The Sacramento Bee stories are available here:
http://www.sacbee.com/ourregion/story/1030603.html