During a ceremony at which awards were given out to metro-Detroit media for reporting, headline writing, design, photography and blogging, among others, The Indy took home its first reporting award.
AFTER BEING NOMINATED by judges in the category of investigative reporting on March 26, 2014, The Ann Arbor Independent accepted its first reporting award at an April 16 ceremony hosted by the Society of Professional Journalists, Detroit Chapter. The newspaper took the first place award for investigative reporting in its class. Mr. Walter Middlebrook, President of the Society of Professional Journalists, Detroit Chapter and the Assistant Managing Editor of The Detroit News, presented the award.
Investigative reporting was the only category in which The Indy competed.
All of the 2014 competition entries were judged by members of the Society of Professional Journalists of San Diego and members of the Society of Professional Journalists of Louisville. The Detroit Society’s Print Class C category for non-daily newspapers and magazines included the Detroit Jewish News, Hour Detroit, Metro Times and The Ann magazine, among others.
Julie Halpert, an Ann Arbor freelance writer who teaches environmentalism journalism at the University of Michigan entered the competition with a piece titled, “Why a Convention Center Can’t Pass No.” The piece was published in the June 2013 issue of The Ann magazine, a local monthly publication. Halpert took home an Honorable Mention for her piece in the category of Best Explanatory Story.
“I took a first last year,” said Halpert, “for the article I wrote about Howard Weinblatt.” In 2012, Halpert wrote a piece titled “The Curious Case of Dr. Weinblatt,” about a local pediatrician who was accused by his neighbor of masturbating while looking out of the window of his house at the neighbor’s 12 year-old daughter. In that article published by The Ann, Halpert explored issues about privacy.
In response to a question about the piece she entered into the Society of Professional Journalists’s competition this year, Julie Halpert said, “My piece was a complicated answer to a question that seemed simple.” According to Halpert her article looked at what the future vision of Ann Arbor should be.
“It was a topic many people in Ann Arbor are interested in, but when I got into the reporting of it I realized the story was very complicated, like peeling off the layers of an onion,” explained Halpert.
Tom Gantert, the former government reporter for The Ann Arbor News prior to its July 2009 closure, won an award as did former AnnArbor.com business reporter Nathan Bomey. Bomey, and several other AnnArbor.com reporters, left to work at the Detroit Free Press.
The Ann Arbor Independent’s award-winning story began with the 2011 “retirement” of former Ann Arbor City Administrator Roger Fraser into a full-time $131,000 per year job with the Michigan Department of Treasury.
“In the space of 36 months, several of Ann Arbor’s highest paid employees ‘retired’ into high-paying jobs,” explained Patricia Lesko, who wrote the award-winning article. “The former Chief of Police ‘retired’ into two full-time jobs paying a combined salary of over $270,000,” she added. “These people didn’t retire. They gamed a system that elected officials have created to be gamed. Taxpayers face enormous pension obligations because public employees are permitted to collect multiple public pensions.”
The competition judges who read Lesko’s article said, “This project offers timely, detailed reporting about the serious problems with pension funding — brought about by years of poor decisions or neglect — that benefit a limited number of employees at a great cost to taxpayers and other government services.”
Katherine Griswold was the Chair of the newspaper’s Editorial Board between October of 2013 and March 2014, when The Indy’s nomination was announced. She said, “This award adds not only to the credibility of The Ann Arbor Independent, it affirms what The Indy is all about: watchdog—as opposed to lapdog—reporting. I’m energized.”
Patricia Lesko added, “This newspaper represents a return to 1945 in many ways: it harkens back to a time when the majority of newspapers in America were independent and locally-owned by people with strong ties to their communities. Our editorial goal is to shine a bright light on local news.”
The Ann Arbor Independent is funded primarily by subscriptions rather than by advertising. The Indy doesn’t accept advertising from local or county government, the public schools, or local universities.
Published each Wednesday, The Ann Arbor Independent is available at shops, grocery stores and newsstands throughout Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Dexter.
Launched in October 2013, The Indy has broken news stories ranging from the refusal of publicly-funded Ann Arbor SPARK to release its audit statements to an Ann Arbor City Council member, to county employees staying at resorts and casinos at taxpayer expense.
Most recently, The Indy was the first local newspaper to look at crime in the five branch AADL system by analyzing 1,037 pages of the AADL’s 2013 internal security incident reports. In its April 3 edition, the newspaper revealed that AADL Trustee Prue Rosenthal had, in 2011, sent an email to the library’s director in which Trustee Rosenthal had made it clear she not only knew about the sale of heroin in the Downtown Library, but that it was best if the public remained ignorant of that fact.