The Star is honored twice in McClatchy President’s Awards
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Throwaway Kids - Part One of Six
Star investigation reveals stark outcomes for America’s foster care children.
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Frequent moves don’t just harm foster kids’ emotions — they hurt their brains
Graduation rate of 35 percent? Many foster children ‘robbed of a good education’
Aging out: Thousands of foster youth graduate to the streets every year
‘The state that neglected me as a kid is the same state that wants to kill me’
The Star was honored twice in this year’s McClatchy President’s Awards, recognizing the best work of 2019 by journalists across the company’s 30 local newsrooms.
The awards, announced Thursday, spotlighted high-impact, investigative and accountability journalism. Two investigative series published by The Star were among the winners.
Throwaway Kids, a six-part series written by Laura Bauer, Judy L. Thomas and Eric Adler, examined the foster care system across the U.S. and found that by nearly every measure states are failing in their role as parents to America’s most vulnerable children.
For that series, The Star spent a year investigating what happens to children across the country after they age out of the system. Star visual journalists Shelly Yang and Tammy Ljungblad, along with McClatchy visual journalist Reshma Kirpalani, shot and produced photos and videos for the series. Visual journalist Neil Nakahodo produced motion graphics.
Reporters interviewed former foster children across the country and surveyed prison inmates in 12 states. Researchers and child welfare experts said the results, while not scientific, were unparalleled for their reach. Corrections officials in several states said the results would be helpful in their efforts to rehabilitate prisoners.
Of those inmates who completed the survey, 1 in 4 said they had been in foster care.
The project also led to proposed legislation in several states, much of it focused on education of foster children who, the project found, graduate at a rate far below other students.
Students from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, as well as data reporters in McClatchy’s Washington, D.C., bureau, assisted in compiling and analyzing the prison surveys.
Earlier this year, the series won first place in public service in the prestigious National Headliner Awards. The category included media companies outside the Top 20 media markets.
Also honored was Defenseless, a series by reporter Katie Moore and opinion writer Dave Helling, which showed how Missouri’s failing public defender system robs its poorest citizens of their constitutional rights.
For this project, the newsroom and editorial board collaborated on a long-term investigation. The journalists traveled across Missouri, interviewing public defenders working in more than two dozen counties, including one who represented a man wrongly convicted of murder
The series ran in seven parts, with five news stories bookended by a column and an editorial calling for the state to fund and fix the defender’s office. Star visual journalist Jill Toyoshiba shot and produced photos and videos for the series. Visual journalist Neil Nakahodo produced motion graphics.
“A seething look at Missouri’s underfunded and understaffed public defender system. This series spotlights lives changed forever as a result of a long-ignored problem,” wrote Cynthia DuBose, senior editor of audience growth and loyalty at McClatchy, who served on the panel of judges.
“Perhaps the most powerful part of this series, the reaction it ignited throughout the state – lawmakers promised urgency in solving the problem and readers lauded the series via a full-page ‘thank you’ advertisement in The Star.”
Among other winners were works by The Wichita Eagle, The Miami Herald, The Raleigh News & Observer and others.
Along with DuBose, the judges included Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, Richard Gingras, vice president of news at Google, Raju Narisetti, global publishing director elect at McKinsey & Company, Jennifer Preston, vice president of journalism at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and Laura Zornosa, a journalism and international studies major at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
This story was originally published May 21, 2020 at 7:09 PM.