Series wins Peabody digital award

‘Doctors & Sex Abuse’ stories also finalist for Pulitzer.

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution series exposing sexual misconduct by physicians across the nation is among the winners of the Peabody-Facebook Futures of Media award, which honors outstanding digital storytelling.

The “Doctors & Sex Abuse” project, published last year, won the award for digital journalism, one of six announced Monday by the social-media giant and the George Foster Peabody Awards program at the University of Georgia. The judges – a panel of UGA honors students, supervised by the Peabody program – praised the Journal-Constitution’s work for “setting a new standard for a traditional medium that is increasingly shifting into digital spaces.”

The awards will be presented May 19 in New York.

Several other organizations have honored the Journal-Constitution’s series, including the Scripps Howard Foundation, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting.

The series was named a finalist in the National Reporting category of the Pulitzer Prizes last month. It also was a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.

The project was the work of reporters Johnny Edwards, Ariel Hart, Alan Judd, Danny Robbins and Carrie Teegardin; data journalist Jeff Ernsthausen; videographer Ryon Horne; news applications developer Emily Merwin; investigative editor Lois Norder; and graphic artist Richard Watkins.