S.F. native honored by prestigious Polk Awards
Journalist recognized for series on rogue Chicago cop
After being laid off from Sports Illustrated in February 2014, Melissa Segura thought it might be time to write the obituary on her journalism career. But journalism runs deep in her veins, so when the Santa Fe native saw an opening at BuzzFeed News for an investigative reporter, she left her job in the city of Santa Fe’s tourism office, as well as aspirations of becoming a lawyer, and jumped at the chance.
The risk paid off for Segura, who this week was named a winner of the George Polk Awards — one of the most prestigious honors in journalism — for local reporting. Segura earned the recognition for a series of stories published by BuzzFeed News about a Chicago police officer accused of framing at least 51 people for murder and about the everyday people affected by his injustice.
The awards, which recognize reporting across all media, are handed
out annually by Long Island University. The awards were established in 1949 in memory of George Polk, a CBS correspondent who was murdered while covering the civil war in Greece in 1948. Among other winners announced Tuesday were Washington Post reporters who covered the controversy surrounding Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore and the Trump campaign’s Russia ties, as well as New York Times reporting on Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement.
“For me, the real reward was when I watched the subject of my first story walk out of prison after 23 years and hug his daughter for the first time,” Segura, 38, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
“It’s on video, and sometimes I just watch it because it’s still a miracle to me, and it happened on Good Friday. A man who was facing the death penalty,” she said. “As a Catholic, thinking about the symbolism of a condemned man walking free on Good Friday was almost more than I could take. I’m so humbled and grateful for the award, but I’m not sure that anything will ever top that feeling.”
Segura, a 1997 graduate of St. Michael’s High School, got her journalism start at The New Mexican as a teen reporter for the newspaper’s Generation Next section.
“She was great,” recalled Bernadette Garcia, a former newspaper employee who oversaw the section for years. “She always knew what she wanted and worked hard.”
Segura said she got involved in the teen page only “because I thought it was cool” but that she had no intention of pursuing a career in print.
“At the time, I wanted nothing more than to be Carla Aragon,” she said, referring to a former TV news anchor from Santa Fe. “That was my career aspiration, to be Carla.”
The city editor at the time, Inez Russell Gomez, saw that Segura had potential and encouraged her to become a newspaper reporter, Segura said. Segura thanked Russell Gomez for her interest but was intent on going into television.
“I remember her being like, ‘You’ll see,’ ” Segura recalled.
Russell Gomez, who is now the newspaper’s editorial page editor, said she remembers Segura doing the work of a real reporter when she was writing for Generation Next.
“Even as a teenager, there was depth and flair to her work,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted her to know that she should think about a career as a journalist. One of our goals at The New Mexican is covering news of interest to teens, but also helping the next generation of talent find their way — and Melissa was one of the best, then and now.”
Before going to work for Sports Illustrated, Segura worked as a summer intern for The New Mexican while attending Santa Clara University, where she graduated in 2001. Segura described her experience in Santa Fe as invaluable.
“From Day One, they just threw me in and treated me like a regular reporter,” she said. “I wasn’t treated any differently. I was expected to do the work. I don’t think there’s anything better than that.”
Segura said she was ready to leave journalism behind when she saw a tweet about a diversity fellowship at BuzzFeed News to work on an investigative project for a year. She said she remembered interviewing the California Innocence Project director, who had told her about a case he was working on in Chicago that involved a police officer accused of framing innocent people.
Segura pitched the story and landed the yearlong fellowship. She immediately went to work, spending countless hours reading court files, knocking on doors and reading others’ research. By the end, she had threaded a number of other cases together that resulted in her award-winning series.
“The simple narrative is of a rogue cop,” she said. “But really, the truth of the matter is that there were so many checks and balances, or so many safeguards, that people assume work and don’t. I wanted the reader to walk away with questions about systems rather than individuals.”
Segura, whose uncle is a former police captain who is now a Santa Fe County Magistrate Court judge, said she was raised with “great reverence” for police.
“I still have that,” she said. “I think it’s one of the most important jobs in the world, so I don’t want people to think that I’m anti-cop, because I’m not.”
But because the position carries a lot of power and responsibility, it’s also important to hold police accountable, she said.
Segura, who is Hispanic, said her upbringing in Northern New Mexico, which she calls a birthplace of good storytelling, gave her a unique perspective.
“For me, these families, even though they were Puerto Rican, the mothers I met were still a lot like my grandma. A lot of the guys, I could see my nephew in them. I could see my cousins in them. They weren’t other people. They weren’t invisible, and I think a lot of that is because of where I’m from,” she said.
Segura said the series highlights the importance of a diverse newsroom.
“I was brought in as a diversity fellow, and a lot of people think that that’s like a back way of jumping the line, that I’m taking an opportunity that maybe I wouldn’t have deserved if the scales weren’t weighted in some way,” she said. “So I’m really glad to say, and I hope that this piece shows, that diversity isn’t necessarily a luxury, particularly in media, but it’s a necessity. This story was out there for decades. But you needed somebody with the eyes and the history and the background to have been able to see why it mattered.”