Mará Rose Williams and The Kansas City Star honored for race, reform school coverage
Mará Rose Williams, a former reporter and now a member of The Star’s editorial board, was honored Wednesday with the Eleanor McClatchy Award.
The award recognizes McClatchy colleagues who show vision, exemplary leadership skills and contribute to the company’s transformation. McClatchy, owner of The Star, has operations in 30 markets in the U.S.
The Star also received two President’s Awards, which spotlight high-impact, investigative and accountability journalism across the company.
The Star was recognized for The truth in Black and white, a project conceived by Williams that took a critical look at how the newspaper covered Kansas City’s Black community, and for its investigation of abuse in Missouri’s unlicensed, Christian reform schools.
Williams, a reporter at The Star for more than two decades, was one of two winners in the category.
“Mará embodies everything the Eleanor McClatchy Award is designed to recognize,” said Billie McConkey, a McClatchy senior vice president. “At The Kansas City Star, Mará has written hard-hitting stories that have led to resignations and reforms. She’s taken on tough issues like school safety and teen suicide, campus protests and the cost of higher education.”
The award, in just its second year, is named for the granddaughter of the company’s founder, James McClatchy, and president of McClatchy for more than 40 years.
In The truth in Black and white, Williams and fellow reporters Eric Adler, Cortlynn Stark and Mike Hendricks explored The Star’s coverage of civil rights, Black culture, school desegregation and crime. They examined the newspaper’s response to the horrific 1977 flood, where the coverage focused on property damage to the Country Club Plaza, rather than destruction and death in the Black community.
And The Star came to grips with the legacy of its founder, William Rockhill Nelson, a crusader for clean government and grand boulevards but a man whose vision of the city was rooted in white supremacy. The project also featured an apology written by Mike Fannin, The Star’s president and editor.
Reporters Laura Bauer and Judy L. Thomas began investigating Missouri’s Christian boarding schools in September after girls were removed from the Circle of Hope Girls Ranch in Cedar County. Earlier this year, the Circle of Hope owners were charged with 102 crimes — all but one are felonies — that include statutory rape, sodomy and physical abuse.
In a series of stories, Thomas and Bauer exposed abuse allegations inside several faith-based boarding schools in Missouri, including Circle of Hope. They revealed how Missouri has allowed abuse in faith-based reform schools for years because of a law allowing them to operate without any state oversight. A proposal to change the law has passed the Missouri House and is awaiting a vote in the Senate.
Judges for the President’s Awards were Anne Kornblut, vice president of global curation, Facebook; Brian Stelter, chief media correspondent, CNN; Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor, The Atlantic; Wesley Lowery, correspondent, CBS News/60 Minutes; Steve Waldman, president and co-founder, Report for America; and Cynthia DuBose, managing editor, audience engagement, McClatchy.