The Star wins prestigious national journalism award for ‘The Truth in Black and white’ series
The Kansas City Star has been awarded a Society of Professional Journalists Special Citation for Excellence in Journalism for its editorial series investigating — and apologizing for — the paper’s racist history and committing to better represent communities of color.
Citizen journalist Darnella Frazier, who filmed the death of George Floyd, and the Los Angeles Times were honored along with The Star as the first recipients of SPJ’s special citation.
The SPJ Board of Directors created the award to recognize an act of journalism that had a major impact on the industry and society at large.
“Many outlets choose not to even undertake deeply critical self-assessments, let alone publish them,” said SPJ National President Matthew T. Hall. “What The Kansas City Star and Los Angeles Times did with their self-assessments of institutional racism and subsequent apologies speaks volumes about how far journalism has to go and how far these two media companies have come over time.”
An apology column was the opener to The Star’s Dec. 20 “The Truth in Black and white” project. In a letter announcing the award to The Star, SPJ Executive Director John Shertzer called the column “an exceptional article in a year of intense racial reckoning in America.”
“Your apology was heartfelt, descriptive, and respectful of your readers. It showed humility while also demonstrating a fierce commitment to being better,” Shertzer wrote. “All media organizations can learn from your example and we hope this well-deserved award brings further attention to it.”
The apology, written by President and Editor Mike Fannin, was the first installment of a seven-part series that came after a team of reporters and editors spent months reviewing stories published by The Star and its sister publication, The Kansas City Times.
The stories from Star journalists Mará Rose Williams, Eric Adler, Cortlynn Stark and Mike Hendricks highlighted the many missteps made by the company in its failure to cover important news events, including local struggles for civil rights and the impacts of the disastrous 1977 flood on communities of color. And it described how The Star’s crime coverage misrepresented Black people by writing about them in that subject far more often than any other.
“We are honored and humbled by this recognition,” Fannin said. “The work to be more inclusive in our coverage continues. For other news organizations considering their own reckonings, our experience says: The past matters, truth matters and saying you’re sorry can still be meaningful.”
Along with the publication of the series, The Star also has taken measures aimed toward improving its relationship with communities of color that the newspaper long ignored.
One was the symbolic step of removing from its pages and website the image and words of its original publisher and founder, William Rockhill Nelson. Nelson was a longtime booster of local developer J.C. Nichols, a major force behind whites-only neighborhoods that helped establish and maintain the racial segregation still present in the city today.
The Star also has established an advisory board composed of accomplished area business leaders, activists and public servants to help guide the newspaper with its coverage moving forward.
Board member Cynthia Herron, an investments and financial specialist, described the series as a positive move. But there is still more work to be done, she said, to ensure the paper presents communities of color in a context broader than negative stories that lack vision of solutions and opportunity.
“I am happy The Star has taken the unprecedented step to hold a mirror to itself and see what they are contributing to the negative culture, how they’re contributing to the positive culture, and they’re willing to make a change,” Herron told The Star.
“The way I see moving forward is The Star being willing to recognize their tone can be adjusted, if they have more access and more information and be a stronger reflection of a community of all cultures,” she added.
SPJ is a national organization that aims to promote journalism ethics and best practices.
The Star’s series was also honored earlier this year as a finalist for the Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics and for the Punch Sulzberger Innovator of the Year Award.
