Sacramento Bee wins 8 first-place honors at California Journalism Awards for 2022

The Sacramento Bee earned eight top prizes and more than a dozen other honors awarded this month by the California News Publishers Association, recognizing exceptional journalism published in 2022.

CNPA in its annual California Journalism Awards honored The Bee with 21 top-three finishes. Winners and finalists were announced on a rolling basis this month.

The Bee won first place in eight categories, twice as many as in 2021:

▪ Health reporter Cathie Anderson was recognized with both first place and third place in the print category for health coverage. Anderson won the top honor for stories explaining the warning signs of domestic violence turning deadly, and third place for coverage of last year’s mpox outbreak. Judges called Anderson’s domestic violence story an “eye-opener.”

▪ Assistant opinion editor Yousef Baig won in the print category for columns, honored for a column exploring the potential for legal psychedelic drugs to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions, and another condemning the problem of gun violence through the lens of the shooting death of a former Sacramento football star. Baig also won third place in CNPA’s open category for columns, with the same two stories recognized.

▪ Politics reporter Jenavieve Hatch won in the digital category for 2022 elections coverage. Judges recognized Hatch’s “meticulously reported” series of stories examining conservative corners of California’s capital region.

▪ Opinion columnist Melinda Henneberger won in the print category for writing, for her stories on a blind, schizophrenic homeless man, Mark Rippee, who died last year in Solano County, and how systemic failures led to his suffering. Judges wrote that Henneberger’s columns explain “the difficulties of the so-called chronically homeless with grace, sensitivity but also clarity.”

▪ Visual journalist Renée C. Byer won in the print category of photo story/essay, for “moving, courageous photos” that accompanied Henneberger’s stories on Rippee.

▪ Reporters Ryan Sabalow and Sam Stanton won in the feature story category for print, for their series on the Sherri Papini hoax. The Redding mother, arrested last March, pleaded guilty in court and admitted that her purported 2016 kidnapping was a fabrication. Judges called Sabalow and Stanton’s telling of the saga “riveting.”

▪ The Canopy, by California service journalism editor Savanna Smith, won top honors in the digital newsletter category. “The Canopy breaks down the wall between journalists and their audience by inviting the reader into Savanna’s life … while still giving the reader a healthy dose of hard news, analysis and feature reporting,” judges wrote.

▪ The Bee won the top spot in front page layout and design for a collection of front pages, including the April 4 edition detailing the deadly shooting in downtown Sacramento. With the banner headline, “Unacceptable tragedy,” the front page covered the mass shooting that left six people dead and 12 others wounded in a gang shootout. “Clean, elegant design,” judges wrote. The series also included a cover that explored gang violence in the capital region and a cover on the state’s wildfire risks.

The Bee won second place or third place in 11 other categories.

A front-page graphic produced by editor Levine illustrating the increasing wildfire risk for properties across California won second place for print informational graphics.

The Bee earned third place in the print and digital categories for breaking news, both for its coverage of the April 2022 mass shooting in downtown Sacramento. Reporters Stanton, Ryan Lillis, Dale Kasler and Jason Pohl, as well as visual journalist Amezcua, were credited in the print category win.

Byer won second place in the digital category for news photography, for an image of a 2-year-old child crying inside an RV during a homeless encampment vehicle eviction on Sacramento’s Evergreen Street.

Food and drink reporter Benjy Egel won third place in the print category for writing, for his story on Sacramento County’s status as the United States’ domestic “caviar capital.”

Kasler and Sabalow earned third place in investigative reporting for their stories on contracting companies accused of defrauding Camp Fire victims as they attempted to rebuild their Butte County homes.

Reporters Pohl, Sabalow, Kevin Nguyen and Phillip Reese won third place in the print category for public service journalism, for a story and database showing that Sacramento has the highest rate of law enforcement pursuits among California’s 10 largest cities.

Visual journalist Paul Kitagaki’s photo of a California State Park ranger saluting a vehicle procession for Elk Grove police Officer Ty Lenehan, who died after being struck by a DUI suspect in a wrong-way crash on Highway 99 in January 2022, won third place in print news photography.

Visual journalist Xavier Mascareñas won third place in the print category for photo story/essay, and third place in video journalism, each for visuals captured of Karuk Tribe salmon fishing in Siskiyou County.

Stanton won third place in print enterprise news story or series, for his accounts of sexual assault lawsuits by alleged victims of a Capital Christian teacher and a Sacramento baseball camp coach.

Stanton, a reporter with The Bee for more than 30 years, in March received the Sacramento Press Club’s prestigious journalist of the year award for 2022. Sacramento Press Club also honored Henneberger for her columns on Rippee, as well as Mascareñas for his Karuk Tribe fishing visual journalism.

In last year’s awards, CNPA honored The Bee with 27 top-five finishes. The organization in this year’s contest reduced the number of finalists to three from five.