Arizona Republic picks up 5 awards for investigative projects
Five investigative projects that were published in the Arizona Republic last year have been recognized by award committees around the country.
Blood and Money – a saga detailing the rise and decline of Modern Vascular and its star doctor Scott Brannan – earned a second-place nod for business coverage from the National Headliner Awards.
In the Best of the West journalism competition, the epic tale about the theft and recovery of Willem de Kooning’s masterpiece, "Woman-Ochre", took second place in the long-form feature writing category.
The Prison Sell, a series of stories that dove into the exploitation of Arizona’s prison labor, came in third in the investigative category in the same competition.
And two articles about Arizona’s water woes – one about a Saudi Arabian company sucking water from under the desert to grow alfalfa to feed cows in the Middle East and the other about disintegrating rural water utilities – won a third place prize for growth and environmental reporting.
“‘Arizona Water Woes’ shows how the best deeply rooted beat journalism can yield a jaw-dropping gotcha in the form of Fondomonte, a Saudia Arabian company that can tap into unlimited amounts of the scarce water supply to grow thirsty crops in the desert on land leased at below-market rates from the state that is shipped halfway around the world to feed its dairy cows in the Middle East,” the judge in the Best of the West competition wrote.
“Water in the Southwest is a complex topic, but this story is a clearly written coffee spitter.”
To top it off, investigative reporter Joseph Darius Jaafari won the City University of New York's Shepard Prize, which comes with a $5,000 purse, for his investigation into Constable Doug Clark, who was involved in the fatal shooting of Marcus Mungeam, a 32-year-old tenant evicted from his apartment last summer.
“Jaafari’s courageous reporting for The Arizona Republic exposed the lack of accountability by the state’s Constable Ethics and Standards Board in the wake of the constable’s actions,” CUNY wrote in a statement. “This prompted other victims to come forward and resulted in the board calling for the constable’s resignation.”
Each of the projects took months to report and write and practically all have had significant impact.
After investigative reporter Andrew Ford revealed that Modern Vascular patients lost their limbs due to allegedly unnecessary procedures and the Department of Justice filed a legal complaint claiming the company defrauded Medicare out of $50 million and allegedly engaged in an illegal kickback scheme, more than half of the company’s 17 clinics have shut down.
In response to an outcry of opposition to the story by Rob O’Dell and Ian James about Fondomonte, the state prohibited the company from digging two new wells.
And if it weren’t for former Arizona Republic investigative reporter Anne Ryman’s long-term coverage of the de Kooning masterpiece, the painting never would have been recovered.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: The Arizona Republic wins 5 awards for investigative projects
