• Home
  • About me: Jim Fitzpatrick
  • Contact

JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« KC Star finally gets a Pulitzer…Plus, it’s time for a crackdown on speeding and reckless driving.
The 2022 Missouri General Assembly is a wrap — part falafel and part gristle »

Please, rewind those presses! Turns out a relatively new KC journalist also won a Pulitzer yesterday.

May 10, 2022 by jimmycsays

Just like last year, I learned belatedly that a Kansas City journalist had won a Pulitzer prize.

Last year, after I had posted my Pulitzer story, my friend Dan Margolies at KCUR informed me that a colleague of his, Chris Haxel, had been one of four NPR correspondents who shared the prize for Audio Reporting. Haxel had contributed a podcast to the Guns & America national reporting project.

I worked that into the post an hour or so after publication.

This year, it took me nearly a full day to find out that a Kansas City reporter had won a Pulitzer this year.

I found out by reading The Beacon’s morning, emailed newsletter.

The local winner was a young woman named Madison Hopkins, who for the last seven months has worked as health care accountability reporter for The Beacon, which made its debut two years ago.

Madison, who, I believe, is in her late 20s, did not win for work she has done for The Beacon but for a series she worked on at her previous employer, the Better Government Association in Chicago.

Madison and 28-year-old Cecila Reyes of the Chicago Tribune collaborated on an examination of Chicago’s long history of failed building- and fire-safety code enforcement, which gave unscrupulous landlords the opportunity to commit serious violations that resulted in dozens of unnecessary deaths.

Madison Hopkins and her former colleagues at the Better Government Association celebrated Monday’s announcement of her (and their) Pulitzer Prize for local reporting.

This was not, of course, the first Pulitzer for the Trib, but it was for the 99-year-old BGA, a non-partisan, nonprofit news organization that works for transparency, efficiency and accountability in government in Chicago and across Illinois.

Hopkins’ and Reyes’ series, which ran in April 2021, followed more than a year of reporting and uncovered 61 deaths from fires in buildings that, the BGA said, “the city knew had fire safety issues, sometimes for years.”

Cecilia Reyes

The investigation highlighted the city’s failure to follow up on complaints about hazards and how the city put landlords’ interests ahead of tenants’ safety.

Most of the 61 people who died were Black.

This Pulitzer was for local reporting, a very prestigious category. It was in the local category that The Kansas City Star and Times won the 1982 Pulitzer for their overall coverage of the Hyatt Regency disaster.

**

Hopkins’ award says a lot not only about her but also about Kelsey Ryan, who founded The Beacon, a non-profit, online news outlet focused, according to its website, “on in-depth journalism in the public interest.”

Ryan was hired by The Star in 2017 and a year and a half later was summarily laid off. Her reaction? After getting a 7 a.m. phone call apprising her of the news, she “had a good cry” and immediately set about determining what she would do next.

Kelsey Ryan

It only took her a few hours…

“By 3 p.m., my work email was downloaded and my resume updated. And by 5 p.m., I realized I really didn’t want to ever work for another McClatchy paper. Or Gannett. Or GateHouse. Or (insert name of struggling newspaper company here). That in some ways, going to another newspaper was the easy route, to grab a lifeboat and hope it won’t sink itself in the next year or two. To bury my head in the sand, pretending more layoffs wouldn’t happen. Instead, I decided I would build a new ship.“

She christened and launched that ship less than two year later. It’s done well enough that she was able to expand last year to Wichita, where she worked for The Eagle before working at The Star. (The Eagle is also a McClatchy paper.)

When Kelsey hired Madison last fall, I don’t know if she had any idea Madison would be in the hunt for a Pulitzer several months later. But, in any event, the hiring is a testament to Kelsey’s managerial instincts and experience. Kelsey now has a Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter on her staff, which should help raise The Beacon’s profile and readership.

…A final note: I find it ironic that where The Star’s Pulitzer-Prize winner, Melinda Henneberger, is looking at KC in the rear view mirror, on her way to The Sacramento Bee, Madison Hopkins is barely out of the car and still probably finding her way around town.

Let’s hope she stays a while and makes a big contribution to local journalism.

You can see some of her stories for The Beacon here.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in Uncategorized |

  • Pages

    • About me: Jim Fitzpatrick
    • Contact
  • Archives

    • January 2023
    • December 2022
    • November 2022
    • October 2022
    • September 2022
    • August 2022
    • July 2022
    • June 2022
    • May 2022
    • April 2022
    • March 2022
    • February 2022
    • January 2022
    • December 2021
    • November 2021
    • October 2021
    • September 2021
    • August 2021
    • July 2021
    • June 2021
    • May 2021
    • April 2021
    • March 2021
    • February 2021
    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
    • October 2014
    • September 2014
    • August 2014
    • July 2014
    • June 2014
    • May 2014
    • April 2014
    • March 2014
    • February 2014
    • January 2014
    • December 2013
    • November 2013
    • October 2013
    • September 2013
    • August 2013
    • July 2013
    • June 2013
    • May 2013
    • April 2013
    • March 2013
    • February 2013
    • January 2013
    • December 2012
    • November 2012
    • May 2012
    • April 2012
    • March 2012
    • February 2012
    • January 2012
    • December 2011
    • November 2011
    • October 2011
    • September 2011
    • August 2011
    • July 2011
    • June 2011
    • May 2011
    • April 2011
    • March 2011
    • February 2011
    • January 2011
    • December 2010
    • November 2010
    • October 2010
    • September 2010
    • August 2010
    • July 2010
    • June 2010
    • May 2010
    • April 2010
    • March 2010
  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 562 other subscribers

Blog at WordPress.com.

WPThemes.


  • Follow Following
    • JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC
    • Join 562 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: