Journal Sentinel earns honors in business reporting
SABEW names paper among nation’s best
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is one of the nation's top business news publications as judged by its peers at the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing.
The Journal Sentinel earned a general excellence award for its business coverage during 2019 in the SABEW Best in Business competition.
The Journal Sentinel was the General Excellence winner in the medium sized publication category, while the Detroit Free Press won honorable mention. The Wall Street Journal was the general excellence winner in the large publication category.
“The judges commend the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for a powerful entry that demonstrated strong work across the board,” SABEW said in announcing the awards.
The Journal Sentinel's Dairyland in Distress, which chronicled the struggles of dairy farmers in our state, was singled out for breadth and command of the topic as well as the innovation demonstrated by the newsroom's staff in presenting the project. The year-long project was the winner in the Economics division for medium and small publications, and its digital presentation was the winner in the Innovation category.
“Judges praised this deeply reported and engagingly written series for its ambition, comprehensiveness and clarity. In addition to the compelling, on-thefarm reporting, this team made strong use of data, photos and multimedia to give readers a deep and nuanced understanding of the economics of milk from the perspective of Wisconsin's struggling dairy farms.”
Judges also singled out the Journal Sentinel's investigation into the widespread practice of ambulances being turned away from the nearest — and sometimes best equipped — emergency room.
It's a practice known as ambulance diversion.
The Turned Away series “brought light to a critically important practice that seemed to have expanded without curbs until the paper's reporting brought it to the attention of authorities who were quick to act once they knew,” according to the SABEW judges. The series received an honorable mention in the health/science division. Turned Away was also a finalist for a Scripps Howard Business/Financial award and a finalist for the McIlheny Award for science and medicine.
The SABEW contest submissions came from 183 news organizations.
“Our reporters bring great knowledge, depth and skill to their coverage, which is why their coverage of Wisconsin business, finance and economics is ranked alongside the best in the nation with the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, ProPublica and the Financial Times,” said George Stanley, editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“Two great examples of our in-depth coverage of key issues are Dairyland in Distress and Turned Away,” Stanley added. “This kind of work is only possible due to the support of our subscribers.”