For the second year in a row,  ProPublica and The Washington Post won the annual University of Florida Award for Investigative Data Journalism at the 2023 Online News Association (ONA) Online Journalism Awards ceremony on Aug. 26 in Philadelphia. The winners will each receive a $7,500 prize and an expense-paid trip to the University of Florida to lead full-day workshops.

ProPublica was honored in the Small/Medium Newsroom category for “Roots of a Breakout,” which investigated how viruses spill over from animals to humans. Over the course of nine months, ProPublica consulted with a dozen researchers, including biologists, ecologists and mathematicians, to adapt a theoretical epidemiological model for Ebola and applied it to historic satellite imagery data from seven locations where the virus has previously spilled over from animals to humans. The investigation found that at the five epicenters of past Ebola outbreaks, dangerous patterns of deforestation had increased in the years since the contagion broke out, raising the chances they’ll face the deadly virus again.

The Washington Post won in the Large Newsroom category for “Black Out.” The series investigating the National Football League’s hiring and firing practices and their effects on Black coaches two decades after the NFL implemented its famed “Rooney Rule” to improve diversity. The Post built two databases to analyze the performance and career paths of all NFL head coaches since 1990. Examining the data, reporters discovered that the inequity in NFL coaching was not only quantifiable but in many ways getting worse.

The San Francisco Chronicle was a finalist in the Small/Medium Newsroom category for “Who Owns the Bay Area?“, which investigated the largest landlords and made it easy for readers to understand property ownership in their communities. Finalists in the Large Newsroom category included The Marshall Project and The New York Times for “In New York Prisons, Guards Who Brutalize Prisoners Rarely Get Fired,” and NBC News and ProPublica for “Overpolicing Parents: How America’s CPS Dragnet Ensnares Families.”

Earlier in the month, ONA announced that a 13-member team of University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications students won the Student Journalism Award in the Student Team Portfolio category for WATERSHED, a six-month investigation of Florida’s water quality to mark the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act and the Florida Water Resources Act. The students pursued the question of whether water quality is worsening today, after the success of those laws.

The UF Data Investigative Journalism Award was established by a gift from the estate of Lorraine Dingman. Representatives from the winning news organizations will visit the College in the spring as journalists-in-residence to discuss the project and work with both students and faculty on investigative journalism techniques.

Posted: August 27, 2023
Category: College News
Tagged as: Investigative Data Journalism Award, ONA, ProPublica, The Washington Post