The New York Daily News topped the winners list at the Deadline Club’s 2015 journalism awards dinner on May 12, taking home five “Rube” statuettes, while The Wall Street Journal won four and The New York Times won three.
Winners in the remaining 18 journalism categories were spread fairly evenly among 13 news organizations, big and small. The ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria included a conversation with Columbia Journalism School Dean Steve Coll, who was interviewed by Reuters media correspondent Jennifer Saba.
SEE THE VIDEO OF SABA’S INTERVIEW WITH COLL
Racial tensions were the subject of many of the winners’ works, including four of the five Daily News stories and pictures that won their respective categories. The Daily News staff won the spot news reporting category with a story about the death of Eric Garner from a police chokehold in Staten Island. A picture by Stephanie Keith of the Daily News of a protest that followed won the feature photography category.
CLICK HERE FOR A FULL LIST OF ALL CONTEST WINNERS
Health care and epidemics also figured prominently in some of the winning entries, including a Wall Street Journal story by Drew Hinshaw about how a shortage of rubber gloves was causing more Ebola deaths in West Africa, which won the enterprise reporting category. The Journal also won for arts reporting, headline writing and multimedia, interactive graphics and animation.
CLICK HERE FOR JUDGES COMMENTS ON CHOOSING THE WINNERS
New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi won the Daniel Pearl Award for Investigative Reporting for a story that explained the reliance by terrorist groups on kidnapping and ransoms as a revenue source. The Times also won the feature reporting and business investigative reporting categories.
ABC News won two Rubes, for its spot news reporting of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 near the Ukraine –Russian Border and for its feature news story on children and guns. News 12 New Jersey’s “Kane in Your Corner” won the television series or investigative reporting category with a story about restraining special needs students.
SEE THE PHOTOS FROM THE 2015 AWARDS DINNER
Some smaller print and digital publications also won, including the Poughkeepsie Journal’s Mary Beth Pfeiffer and Stuart Shinske, who topped the reporting by a newspaper with a circulation under 100,000 category with a story about prescription drug abuse. Financial Planning, a small publication, won the magazine investigative reporting category for a story about whether better financial planning could reduce the rate of suicides in the military.
Sponsors help support scholarship winners
The awards dinner, which raises funds that The Club uses in part to pay for scholarships, was supported by three sponsors. They were Sloane & Company (sloanepr.com), Prudential (prudential.com) and Help a Reporter Out, or HARO (helpareporter.com)
Four students, who won scholarships from the Deadline Club’s charitable arm, the Deadline Club Foundation, of $2,500 each, were recognized at the dinner. They were Fatima Bhojhani and Tusha Mittal, both of Columbia University and Alex Kane and Nadeen Shaker, both of New York University.