Miami Herald wins Scripps Howard Award for ‘House of Cards’ — a 3D Surfside reconstruction
An investigative team from the Miami Herald has won one of the top awards in journalism for its deep examination of the factors that contributed to the deadly collapse of Surfside’s Champlain Towers South.
The Scripps Howard Awards, in their 69th year, honor journalism that spurs action, news organizations that go the extra mile to expose unknown information and journalists who embrace new technologies to provide immersive experiences for their audiences.
“House of Cards” earned the Scripps Howard Award for Excellence in Local/Regional Investigative Reporting, an award that recognizes substantive investigative reporting that covers a region or market-specific issue intelligently and completely.
The entry consisted of 10 articles, including a 3D interactive element that wove together survivor accounts, design drawings, damage photos, inspection reports and expert analysis to zero in on a critical connection between the pool deck and the property’s southern perimeter wall whose failure may have helped turn a localized collapse into a catastrophic one, taking down a large portion of the residential tower.
The articles were written by the Herald’s forensic team, consisting of Sarah Blaskey, Aaron Leibowitz, Ben Conarck and Nicholas Nehamas, along with reporter/data specialist Ana Claudia Chacin, Linda Robertson and Andres Viglucci.
SURFSIDE INVESTIGATION
House of Cards: How decades of problems converged the night Champlain Towers fell.
The interactive was spearheaded by the Herald’s Blaskey, Leibowitz, Conarck and Nehamas, along with McClatchy journalists Sohail Al-Jamea, Eduardo M. Alvarez, Rachel Handley, David Newcomb and Aaron Albright. It was edited by Casey Frank, the Herald’s senior editor for investigations and enterprise, and Mary Behne.
The winners were selected by a panel of veteran journalists and media leaders. Each Scripps award comes with a $10,000 stipend.
The judges said “House of Cards” was “breathtaking — in its presentation, in its depth and in its storytelling.”
“The reconstruction of the collapse set a new standard for showing and telling readers how 98 people lost their lives,” they said. “The stories leading up to that dramatization laid a solid foundation based on documents, court cases and interviews with survivors and experts.”
“This is wonderful recognition for the deep investigative and innovative, interactive work that explained the collapse of Champlain Towers South,” said Monica R. Richardson, executive editor of the Herald and Florida regional editor of McClatchy, the Herald’s parent company. “Miami Herald and McClatchy journalists have led the way nationally in the coverage of the collapse since day one and this award is a tribute to that work.”
The Herald’s Surfside coverage has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news, the latter bestowed on the staff as a whole.
Last week, the Herald won three awards from the International News Media Association, including the top honor, “Global Best in Show,” for the 3D interactive. Last month, the same interactive earned a Webby Award” in the Website and Mobile Sites category for Best Individual Editorial Feature/Media Company.
It was the wee hours of the morning on June 24, 2021, when a major portion of the 40-year-old tower pancaked down. The coverage explored how decades of engineering and maintenance problems converged that night, resulting in the unthinkable.
SURFSIDE INVESTIGATION
House of Cards: How decades of problems converged the night Champlain Towers fell.
“The Miami Herald investigative team is focused on the pursuit of accountability in our public service mission. This recognition signals how important it is to continue investing in and supporting quality local journalism,” Richardson said.
The Herald, in partnership with ProPublica, was also a finalist in the “Distinguished Service to the First Amendment” category for “Birth & Betrayal,” an investigation — reported and written by Carol Marbin Miller and Daniel Chang with photos and videos by visual journalist Emily Michot — into a Florida program that broke a promise to provide healthcare to children who suffered catastrophic brain injuries at birth. The award, won by the Arizona Republic for “Democracy in Doubt,” honors an individual or organization for distinguished service in the cause of the First Amendment guarantee of a free press.
This story was originally published June 13, 2022 at 8:10 PM.
Omar Rodríguez Ortiz
Miami Herald