Hoosier State Press Association - The Indiana Publisher - Better Newspaper Contest
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/96748
Division 6 Best News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure/Category 1 First place Tragedy at the State Fair Staff, The Indianapolis Star Comments: Hands down the clear winner. It was compelling, textbook coverage of a major news event with taut, dramatic writing and plenty of eyewitness accounts all tied up in time for Sunday���s paper. Great informational graphic elements, a remarkable aftermath sidebar and coverage of the governor���s news conference. The Page 1 photo by Matt Kryger and his inside photo page captured the horror and chaos of the stage collapse. A great team effort. Second place Indicted Staff, The Times (Munster) Comments: Commendable use of multimedia to create multiple points of entry for readers and website visitors. Two well-written Page 1 stories anchored with photos. A start-to-finish video of the U.S. Attorney���s news conference; a tight, well-structured video wrap of the entire event by Sarah Tompkins; a PDF of the indictment itself; an editorial; live chat; and a newsroom video chat that rambled on for too long. Third place Purdue���s bold choice Staff, The Indianapolis Star Comments: A strong mainbar hitting all the stakeholders. A great idea to get political columnist Matthew Tully to put the appointment into perspective by examining Daniels��� political style with what it takes to run a university. Robert King���s look at Daniels��� record on education and Mary Beth Schneider���s political obituary rounded out a great package that even included an editorial capping the surprise appointment. Best News Coverage With No Deadline Pressure/Category 2 First place Our children, our city Robert King, The Indianapolis Star Comments: None given. Second place Echoes of a tragedy Virginia Black & Mary Kate Malone, South Bend Tribune Comments: None given. Third place The high cost of capital crime Mark Wilson, Evansville Courier & Press Comments: None given. Best Ongoing News Coverage/Category 3 First place State Fair stage collapse Staff, The Indianapolis Star Comments: The Star left no stone unturned in their reporting. Second place Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission John Russell, The Indianapolis Star Comments: Solid watchdog journalism and strong investigative work. Third place For the love of children Virginia Black & Mary Kate Malone, South Bend Tribune Comments: Great storytelling on a high-outrage issue. Truly important work. ���As bad as it gets��� Robert King and David Lindquist The Indianapolis Star The crowd was poised in anticipation, including scores of people pressed up against the stage, just seconds before country music sensation Sugarland was to perform at the State Fair on Saturday night. Above the stage, nestled in the rigging, a crew member had taken his position, ready to shine a spotlight on the action. But the weather near the Indiana State Fairgrounds was starting to get dicey. Backstage, State Police special operations commander Brad Weaver was watching an ugly storm moving in on radar via his smartphone. He and fair Executive Director Cindy Hoye decided it was time to evacuate the crowd. But a minute later, when WLHK program director Bob Richards addressed the crowd, the word was that the show would go on, and that the Seconds later, a fierce wind blew in from the direction of the midway, kicking up what one witness described as ���a canopy of dust.��� In a moment that eyewitnesses described as both terrifying and in slow motion, the massive rigging above the stage bearing lights, sound equipment and at least one crew member swayed menacingly and then came crashing down on the crowd. Four people were killed and 40 were injured severely enough that they needed to be taken to local hospitals. More than 150 were treated at a makeshift triage unit at the fairgrounds itself. It was a fairgrounds tragedy eclipsed in scale only by a 1963 propane tank explosion at the Coliseum that killed 74 people. The scope of the disaster even cast doubt ��� at least as of 1 a.m. ��� on whether the fair would resume today as scheduled. Concertgoer Brittany Pangburn, 23, Carmel, saw it all happen from the Hoosier Lottery Grandstand. Seated there with some girlfriends, she saw the dust whip up, the roof of the stage twist and then come crashing down. In the tumult and the dust, Pangburn said all she could hear was wind ��� and screams. ���It was terrifying,��� Pangburn said. ���It really did look like slow motion,��� said Jamie Roberts, 25, who came to the concert with Pangburn. ���All we could For complete story, see www.hspafoundation.org. Click on ���Contests.��� Our children, our city Robert King The Indianapolis Star Everyone said the first week of school would be peaceful. The students ��� even the ones who spent last year in trouble ��� will show up the first week with a clean slate and a desire to keep it that way. That was what the faculty at Donnan Middle School predicted. I seem to recall hearing something similar last year in kindergarten, where I spent the school year writing about the city���s youngest students ��� children taking their first steps in school. It didn���t work out so well. I watched two 5-year-olds slug it out on the reading rug on the third day of school. So how would it be here in middle school, where I���ve been ���promoted��� and plan to spend the next nine months writing about children at one of the toughest middle schools in Indianapolis? Let���s just say the fragile peace of the opening week started to fray barely 10 hours into the new year. It was Tuesday morning, and already a school police officer had restrained a boy whose clenched fists suggested he might be about to tear into an assistant principal. Later, it took three adults ��� the principal, the social worker and the behavioral specialist ��� half an hour to reduce to a low boil the anger of a boy with a neck tattoo who was tired of being told to tuck in his shirt. It was enough that Brian Burke, Donnan���s first-year principal, had just told me and a teacher on her break that he thought the new year���s very short honeymoon was almost over. The words were barely out of Burke���s mouth when, from the other end of a long hallway, came the piercing sound of shattering glass. Backlit by the midday sun, the figure moving in front of the far window was hard for me to make out. But we quickly advanced on the scene and soon found a fist-sized hole in the second-story window. Nearby, on the stairwell, was a single drop of blood. It looked like that might be the limit of the damage. But a few steps farther down the staircase, there was another drop of blood. For complete story, see www.hspafoundation.org. Click on ���Contests.��� State Fair stage collapse Tim Evans The Indianapolis Star It���s a troubling question in the midst of tragedy but one that state officials must now try to answer: Was there something that could have been done to avoid the deadly catastrophe that took place Saturday at the Indiana State Fair? On Sunday, various state agencies began the sobering task of trying to explain just how five people were killed and 45 others were injured when an overhead stage rigging came crashing down on people waiting for the start of a Sugarland concert. Some, including Gov. Mitch Daniels, blamed the horrific collapse on a cruel and random act of Mother Nature ��� a sudden, powerful wind gust. Page 58 crowd should be prepared to find shelter if things changed. Some of the crowd sensed the danger and left without further word. But the majority remained. ���I���m not clear,��� Daniels said, ���how anyone could have foreseen a sudden, highly localized blast of wind.��� But others questioned whether part of the problem was man-made ��� and questioned why State Fair officials and State Police didn���t take ominous weather warnings more seriously and specifically order an evacuation before the storm hit. ���They should have told people to get out,��� said Jay Kizer, 35, Whiteland, who was in attendance. ���But they didn���t.��� Fair officials said Sunday they were trying to. But they ran out of time. Indiana State Fair spokesman Andy Klotz said the ultimate decision to evacuate an event lies with fair Executive Director Cindy Hoye, in consultation with State Police and emergency personnel. Dan McCarthy, the meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service office in Indianapolis, said the agency had been tracking the possibility of Saturday night storms since Friday and had been in regular contact with fair officials and police as the storm approached. He said the agency issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Marion County at 8:39 p.m., with wind gusts as high as 77 mph reported in Plainfield, just west of Indianapolis, as the storm approached the city. For complete story, see www.hspafoundation.org. Click on ���Contests.���