Express-news journalists honored in Texas contest
Express-news journalists were honored with first-place awards for storytelling, editorial writing and business reporting in the Texas Managing Editors’ annual Excellence in Journalism contest.
Vincent T. Davis, author of the paper’s weekly San Antonio Stories column, won the coveted Michael Brick Storytelling Award for “elegant, insightful, closely observed stories about an everyday person or people.”
Cary Clack won first place in editorial writing, and Patrick Danner took the first-place prize for business reporting.
The Express-news placed second among the state’s largest newspapers, behind only its sister paper, the Houston Chronicle, in the Newsroom of the Year competition, based on a paper’s print and digital journalism and its performance across all the contest categories.
Overall, Express-news reporters, photographers, page designers, digital producers and other staff members collected 24 awards in the competition, which recognized work published
in 2021. The results were announced Saturday and Sunday at the Texas Managing Editors’ convention in Irving.
The Michael Brick award is named for a Texas journalist who wrote for the New York Times, Houston Chronicle, Express-news and other papers before his death in 2016 at age 41. The award recognizes “fine writing, detailed reporting, voice, empathy and surprise,” qualities for which Brick was admired.
The five stories in Davis’ winning entry included profiles of Nettie Hinton, an African American educator and civil rights activist, and a 96-year-old barber named Andy Banda, who was closing his shop after 70 years.
Hinton grew up in San Antonio under Jim Crow, and Davis’ profile vividly evoked a not-sodistant time when Blacks were required to sit in the back of buses and pay a poll tax and were allowed into Playland Park, with its famed roller coaster, on Tuesdays only.
In his profile of Banda, Davis described how the sight of barber chairs bolted to a tile floor and a box of magazines “swept me back in time to my childhood” and to a Georgia barber shop where his great-grandfather took him for haircuts.
“As he and fellow veterans, church deacons and brickyardworking men solved the ills of the world, I’d flip through periodicals like Argosy, Ebony, and Popular Mechanics fanned out on a table like a gambler’s hand of cards,” Davis wrote.
Clack, a columnist and member of the Express-news editorial board, was honored for a selection of five editorials on topics ranging from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol to new laws in Texas and other states limiting mail balloting and polling place hours.
The contest judges said of Clack’s work: “The arguments are clear, strong and persuasive.
The writing is eloquent, even poetic.”
Danner was recognized for an article about a personal injury lawyer’s claim to have won a $1.25 billion judgment for a victim of sexual assault. Lawyer Thomas J. Henry advertised the claim on a giant billboard along Interstate 35 in downtown San Antonio.
Danner’s story revealed what the billboard omitted: The assault victim never received any money.
A judge had granted Henry’s request for the huge award after the defendant in the case, a youth baseball coach, failed to appear for trial in December 2018. As Danner reported, Henry did not file for a lien on the defendant’s property or take other steps to collect on the judgment.
Danner’s reporting prompted the Texas Supreme Court to tighten rules on lawyers’ advertising, requiring disclosure of the amounts actually received by clients.
Express-news journalists won second-place honors in five categories: Adrian Alvarez in designer of the year, Mike Finger in sports column writing, border correspondent Dudley Althaus in specialty reporting, Lisa Krantz in feature photography, and Jacob Beltran and Taylor Pettaway in breaking news.
Emilie Eaton and Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje won thirdplace honors in the star investigative report of the year category for “Nowhere to Hide,” their series on domestic violence in San Antonio.
The series also won third place in star online package of the year for the work of Eaton, Stoeltje, graphics reporter Ryan Serpico, digital producer Angela Alcala-bach, graphic artist Monte Bach, digital audience analyst Joy Marie Scott and Randi Stevenson, executive producer of Expressnews.com.
Express-news staff members won third-place honors in six additional categories: Brian Chasnoff in star reporter of the year, Jeff Mcdonald in both the sports feature and star sportswriter of the year categories, Jessica Phelps in star photojournalist of the year, Nancy M. Preyorjohnson in star opinion writer of the year and Nancy Floeck Wilson in headline writing.