Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown wins Dorothy Storck Award for column writing

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown was named the winner Saturday of the Chicago Journalists Association’s Dorothy Storck Award for column writing.

Brown, who has been at the newspaper since 1982, was honored for three columns published in the past year: “Are they just going to move us around like cattle,” on homeless people in Chicago, a subject he has written extensively on, “South Side laundromat owner: Bank took me to the cleaners” and “State hounds grandma for aid she says she repaid long ago.”

“This is someone who can go from hard-hitting investigations to columns that tug at your heart,” said Maudlyne Ihejirika, a Sun-Times colleague who is president of the group. “He writes about homelessness in a way that makes you care.”

The award is named for Storck, a former Chicago and syndicated newspaper columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winner who died in August 2015. It was established by her fiance Dick Simpson, the former Chicago alderman who is now a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Journalists Mick Dumke, from ProPublica Illinois, and Deborah Douglas, whose columns were featured in The Chicago Reporter, tied for second place.

READ THE WINNING COLUMNS

• ‘Are they just going to move us around like cattle?’

• S. Side laundromat owner: ‘BANK TOOK ME TO THE CLEANERS’

• State hounds grandma for aid she says she repaid long ago