Miami Herald wins top awards at Florida Press Club competition

The Miami Herald won both of the Florida Press Club’s top awards in its annual Excellence in Journalism Competition Saturday.

Judges voted the Frances DeVore Award for Public Service to “Beyond Punishment,” an examination of coercive sex, corruption and cover-ups at Lowell Correctional Institution, the nation’s largest women’s prison. The stories were written by Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown

The club’s Lucy Morgan Award for In-Depth Reporting went to the Herald’s series “City for Sale,” an examination of widespread corruption in the city of Opa-locka. The series is the work of investigative reporter Michael Sallah and Jay Weaver, who covers federal courts.

Sallah and Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein won the club’s That is so ... Florida Award for “License to Launder,” a look at a Bal Harbour Police Department undercover task force whose members laundered tens of millions of dollars in money for drug cartels, keeping millions for themselves, without making a single arrest.

Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald staffers Mimi Whitefield, Oscar Diaz, Abel Fernandez and Nora Gamez Torres won in the news website category for In Cuba Today. Whitefield, who covers Cuba for the Herald, also won in the religion writing category and in the travel and tourism category.

Other Miami Herald finalists in a various categories were investigative reporter Carol Marbin Miller, Tallahassee bureau chief Mary Ellen Klas and business writer Nancy Dahlberg.

The 65-year-old club also distributed awards for journalists’ work in illustration, newspaper design and photography at its annual convention at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in St. Augustine.

This story was originally published November 6, 2016 at 6:33 PM with the headline "Miami Herald wins top awards at Florida Press Club competition."