The Collier Spotlight
The first Collier Spotlight winner, a quarterly certificate recognizing groundbreaking reporting on state government institutions, was awarded Oct. 7 to Texas Public Radio and reporter Paul Flahive for a multimedia investigation into the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
The certificate award includes a $500 honorarium.
The project, “When Home Is A Danger,” found that more than 1,200 children died in Texas from 2018 to 2023 from maltreatment. More than half of the deaths blamed on abuse and neglect occurred in families that had come under state scrutiny. One of five of those deaths occurred in families that had already been investigated at least three times for abuse and neglect. Nearly 100 of these families had been investigated six or more times.
One of four deaths occurred in families that had been investigated within a year prior and more than 200 happened within six months of an investigation.
This project was produced as part of the Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S Fellowship.
The goal of the Collier Spotlight is to expand the impact of the Collier Prize initiative – and encourage news organizations to do more state government accountability reporting.
Entries can be nominated by anyone. There is no submission fee. All media platforms are eligible.
Subsequent Collier Spotlight honors will be awarded in January, April and July. Submission deadlines are Dec. 1, March 1, June 1 and Sept. 1.
An advisory board reviews and ranks submissions. The news organization that produced the top ranked work will be awarded a $500 honorarium and a certificate.
To submit a nomination, email collierprize@jou.ufl.edu. Please include the full text of the story you are nominating, either in the body of your email or as an attachment, as well as the URL.
Your submission also should include a contact phone number, the author’s name and organization, the publish date and a pdf of the work if a URL is unavailable. Please make sure the URL can be accessed if the website has a paywall.
Collier Spotlight Advisory Board
Ted Bridis, the Michael and Linda Connelly senior lecturer in investigative reporting at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. Before joining UF in 2018, Bridis was editor of the Associated Press’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington investigative team and was AP’s leading newsroom expert on security practices for source-protection and on the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and related laws.
David Dahl, former editor of the Maine Monitor, a nonprofit newsroom focused on nonpartisan investigative and explanatory journalism in the state of Maine. Before taking on that role, he was deputy managing editor at the Boston Globe. Before joining the Globe, David worked for 20 years at the St. Petersburg Times covering politics and state government. He was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University and a fellow at the Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program at Columbia University. He’s taught journalism at Emerson College, Boston College and Boston University.
Pam Fine, former managing editor at the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Indianapolis Star, as well as Knight Chair for News, Leadership, and Community at the University of Kansas, where she collaborated on projects with professional news organizations and taught reporting, ethics and other courses. She is past president of the American Society of News Editors and also played a leadership role at Report for America.
Manny Garcia, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor who has led multiple newsrooms including Houston Landing, the Austin American-Statesman, the Naples Daily News and el Nuevo Herald. He served as senior editor for the Pro-Publica-Texas Tribune investigative initiative, and as standards editor for the USA Today Network. In 2022, the National Press Foundation honored Garcia with the Benjamin C. Bradlee Editor of the Year Award.
Robert McClure, former executive editor of InvestigateWest, a nonprofit newsroom he helped found in Seattle with a focus on the environment, public health and government accountability. McClure was a co-finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and winner of the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism. He also was the recipient of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship and the Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship.
Monica Richardson, senior vice president at USA Today. In her 30 years as a reporter and Pulitzer Prize winning editor, she led newsrooms in Miami and Atlanta before becoming vice president for local news at the McClatchy Company, which owns the Miami Herald, Kansas City Star, Sacramento Bee, Charlotte Observer, Raleigh News and Observer and 25 other news organizations. The National Press Foundation named her Benjamin C. Bradley Editor of the Year in 2023.