The staff of The Reporting Project has won the national Journalistic Impact Award in the annual journalism competition held by the Local Independent Online News organization.
The award, presented Thursday evening in Chicago, “recognizes a LION member that has consistently produced journalism with meaningful and demonstrable impact in its communities.” LION has more than 575 members, and The Reporting Project was the best among its peer small newsrooms in what LION said was “the most competitive” category in the contest.
In announcing the award, the organization said “The Reporting Project doggedly covered Intel’s 28-billion-dollar project to build the world’s largest computer-chip manufacturing campus. Their reporting allowed the community to hold companies and public officials accountable.”
The Reporting Project is the nonprofit news organization of the Denison University Journalism Program, and its mission is to provide Licking County with fact-based news and information and to tell the stories of important and interesting people and places in the county. It also provides students with mentoring and experience that will help them provide a sustainable future for local journalism.
Judges in the LION contest said “The Reporting Project showed clear impact from the diligent reporting on the impending Intel plant being built in the community, driving community response and civic engagement, and altering at least some of the outcomes.”
On hand in Chicago to receive the award was Reporting Project Managing Editor Julia Lerner and Reporting Project staff members Noah Fishman, Brin Glass, Andrew Theophilus and Caroline Zollinger, who are all senior journalism majors at Denison.
“It’s an honor to be part of such a talented, hard-working team of journalists – students and faculty – who are so dedicated to the vital community service that is reliable local journalism,” said Jack Shuler, a member of The Reporting Project reporting team and director of the Denison Journalism Program. “And we at The Reporting Project greatly appreciate the support of our readers who see so much value in local news reporting that they make regular donations to support our work.
“We also appreciate the incredible support of Denison University and the administration, and Denison alumni who support The Reporting Project in many ways,” Shuler said.
Julia Lerner, managing editor of The Reporting Project, said “it’s a thrill to be honored in a national contest by our peers in journalism. The Journalistic Impact Award is another validation of the important work being done by our reporters in Licking County.”
The Reporting Project staff saw an opportunity in January 2022 when Intel announced its plans to build a massive computer-chip manufacturing campus in western Licking County – an opportunity to report and write about the ripple effects of the largest economic development project in state history. That coverage continues today, and the ripple effects of the transformational development go far and wide, affecting agriculture, the environment, transportation, education, construction workers and materials, housing prices and availability, individual homeowners and entire communities.
Johnstown, which is next door to the Intel site, is chief among them and is seeing dramatic changes to the landscape around it and to the community itself. Nearby Alexandria is seeing another kind of impact – the unwanted affection of construction materials companies that have sought to build up to four manufacturing operations to mix asphalt and concrete – beyond the one concrete-mixing plant already in operation near the village of 500 people.
The Reporting Project broke the story in March 2023 about the first asphalt plant proposal and has been reporting on it and related issues since then, informing a community that galvanized to take action to stop the construction of those facilities. To date, none of them have been built.
“While we are honored by the national recognition of the impact of our reporting,” said Lerner, “The Reporting Project team/staff reports and writes the news first and foremost to serve our community, and we will continue to do that by writing stories that otherwise might not have been written.”
the nonprofit news organization of the Denison University Journalism Program.
Also this week, the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont announced that Alan Miller, Journalism professor of practice at Denison, “is among the 38 honorees who are helping to forge a sustainable future for local news through university-led reporting programs.”
The Center for Community News says its “faculty champions” program is a national initiative to support the people running local news reporting programs at U.S. colleges and universities across the United States. The center says that news-academic partnerships have emerged as a critical contributor to the national news landscape and one solution to the crisis facing local news.
“The news coverage that these programs are providing in coordination with their local outlets is helping to meet critical information needs,” said CCN Director Richard Watts. “Most importantly, they offer students a chance to contribute to public life and develop skills that will serve them in journalism and far beyond.”
The faculty receiving awards this year represent 24 states and 13 minority-serving institutions. Sixteen of the honorees have proposed or are engaged in partnerships with public media or other local media, including The Reporting Project, which makes everything it produces locally available to any news organization that wants to publish it. Eighteen will lead democracy and elections coverage this fall, and three lead bilingual reporting programs.
The Center for Community News in Burlington is linking and supporting programs at more than 100 colleges and universities, including Denison, where journalism faculty are mentoring the next generation of journalists and providing a public service by providing reliable news and information to their communities – and working toward a sustainable future for local journalism.
TheReportingProject.org is the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.
thereportingproject@denison.edu