For the second time in three years, Fort Worth Weekly has won a national journalism award from the Investigative Reporters and Editors organization.
The Weekly‘s “Hear No Evil, Smell No Evil” story, produced in collaboration with the Center for Public Integrity, took top honors in the IRE contest’s local-circulation weeklies division. Reporter Joaquin Sapien and data analyst Ben Welsh revealed that although TXU had repeatedly poured more pollution from its coal-fired plants into the Texas air than its permits allowed, state regulators had almost no knowledge of the situation and had fined the giant utility only once in 10 years. Sapien and Welsh learned this by comparing TXU’s federal emission reports, filed with the Environmental Protection Agency, and TXU’s reports to the state. Those same public records could have been analyzed by state regulators but apparently never were.
Gathering and analysis of the data and much of the reporting were done as a project of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that specializes in investigative journalism. Sapien worked with the Weekly to complete the reporting and editing of the story, which was published simultaneously by the newspaper and online by CPI.
In 2006, the Weekly won IRE honors for “A Stunning Toll,” a statewide examination of abuses of Tasers by Texas law enforcement officers, done in conjunction with the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas and University of North Texas journalism students.
