Chicago Sun-Times staff members have won two top prizes in the National Headliner Awards, which “honor the best journalism in the United States.”
The awards, announced Wednesday, went to:
• Lynn Sweet, Elvia Malagón, Sophie Sherry, Paul Saltzman and Manny Ramos, first place for breaking news in daily newspapers, for coverage of the mass shooting at last year’s Highland Park Fourth of July parade. The contest judges called the coverage online and via social media “remarkable.” They said Sweet, the Sun-Times’ Washington bureau chief, who was at the parade as a spectator, “should be singled out for showing reporters how street reporting is done.”
• Neil Steinberg, first place for local interest column on a variety of subjects, for a selection of three columns. It’s the second year in a row Steinberg has won the honor. The judges called his work “delicate, spare, relatable” and said his “voice stands out, focusing on everyday events and people and making sense of what might otherwise have been mundane or forgettable.”
Also honored were:
- Stephanie Zimmermann and Lauren FitzPatrick, second place for investigative reporting among newspapers in the nation’s 20 biggest media markets, for an investigation of deadly expressway wrecks they linked to the way highway crews pile plowed snow against concrete roadside barriers.
- Frank Main, Tom Schuba, NPR’s Cheryl W. Thompson and WBEZ’s Matt Kiefer, third place for feature and human interest story among broadcast radio networks and syndicators, for “In Chicago,handguns turned into high-capacity machine guns fuel deadly violence.”
The National Headliner Awards are given by the Press Club of Atlantic City, which describes the competition as “one of the oldest and largest annual contests in the country recognizing journalistic merit.”
