2024
Ben Felder, Investigate Midwest’s editor-in-chief, received two honors from Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists for his time as a reporter covering key issues affecting rural Oklahoma.
“Oklahoma’s permit system ushered in new wave of industrial poultry farm growth” won third place for its critical examination of Oklahoma’s permitting system for large-scale poultry farms.
The story reveals how the state’s less stringent Poultry Feeding Operation (PFO) permits allow industrial farms to bypass the more rigorous Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) regulations, enabling them to operate near homes and avoid notifying residents. Felder’s reporting captured the environmental and health challenges local communities face, from water pollution to degraded air quality, underscoring the regulatory complexities surrounding these farms in rural eastern Oklahoma.
Felder’s second-place, award-winning piece, “Oklahoma governor says China is buying up the state’s farmland. The data he cites points to other countries,” delves into foreign land ownership in Oklahoma, challenging state-level narratives about Chinese investment. Through meticulous data analysis, Felder reveals that farmland purchases involve entities from several countries, offering clarity on an often misinterpreted issue and prompting discussion about foreign agricultural investments and state policy responses.
Our collaborative series with the Flatwater Free Press on Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen’s global hog enterprise, water quality issues surrounding his operations, and his political influence over agricultural policy has won first place in Explanatory Reporting from the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). Judges praised the series, co-written by senior reporter Sky Chadde and Flatwater Free Press reporter Yanqi Xu, for its “masterful investigative reporting” that uncovered the hidden environmental impacts of Pillen’s hog empire.
The series also received the top business reporting award in the government (small division) category from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW) in its 2024 Best of Business awards. This recognition underscores the critical importance of investigating the intersection of politics, business, and environmental health.
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Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen’s office, industry groups crafted bill easing ag permitting process, emails show
Pillen’s Water: High nitrate detected on hog farms owned by Nebraska’s governor
Pillen’s Rise: After building pork empire, Nebraska’s governor stands at intersection of state and ag power
Additionally, our story on farmworkers and heat stress, published in August 2023, received honorable mention in the 2024 North American Agricultural Journalists Writing Awards.
2023
Our columnist Dave Dickey placed first in both the Opinion and Column categories of the 2023 North American Agricultural Journalists Writing Awards. His award-winning works were published in 2022 and include one on embedded software license agreements and another holding accountable the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Our collaboration between Madison McVan and InvestigateTV, Secret Subsidies, came in second place in the Special Projects category also in the NAAJ writing contest.
Our story on Illinois’s approach to pesticide exposure incidents, published April 2022, was a runner-up in the small newsrooms category for the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Awards for Investigative Reporting in 2023.
read the work here
Column: It’s time to put an end to tractor dealer embedded software license agreements
Opinion: APHIS needs to be held accountable for Envigo dog breeding failures
How Illinois’ ‘fragmented system’ of monitoring pesticide exposure ‘allows individuals to get poisoned over and over without any brakes’
2022
Our series on Seresto collars received a second honorable mention in the Society for Environmental Journalists’ Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting, Small category in 2022.
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Our “Big Ag” collaboration with Harvest Public Media, published in November 2021, won the first-ever small newsrooms category honor for the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Awards for Investigative Reporting.
It also placed third at the North American Agricultural Journalists Writing Contest, in the Special Projects division.
read the story here
Corporate money keeps university ag schools ‘relevant,’ and makes them targets of donor criticism
Large donors can put universities in potentially awkward positions when faculty conclusions conflict with the interests of those benefactors. Data collected by Harvest Public Media and Investigate Midwest shows corporations have given at least $170 million to ag colleges in the past decade.
2021
Our Sept. 30, 2021, story by Madison McVan received an honorable mention in the Investigative category, small division, in the SABEW Best in Business awards.
Our November 11, 2020 story by Sky Chadde, Investigate Midwest, with Rachel Axon, Kyle Bagenstose and Kevin Crowe, USA TODAY, won first place in the News category of the 2021 North American Agricultural Journalists Writing Contest and Outstanding Occupational Safety and Health News Story of the Year Award from the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA).
The overall series on meatpacking and COVID-19 also won a SABEW award in the Government category (Rachel Axon, Kyle Bagenstose, Sky Chadde and Kevin Crowe,) and was a Semi-Finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting (Sky Chadde, Rachel Axon, Kyle Bagenstose, Kevin Crowe, Erin Mansfield, Frank Hernandez, Doug Caruso, Emily Le Coz, Chris Davis, Pamela Dempsey, and Staffs of the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting and USA TODAY).
This December 4, 2020 story by Johnathan Hettinger also won third place in the News category of the 2021 North American Agricultural Journalists Writing Contest as well as second place in the Ongoing Coverage or Series category. In August of 2021, this series was awarded the Society for Environmental Journalists’ Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting, Small. It also received an Honorable mention for SEJ’s Nina Mason Pulliam Award for Outstanding Environmental Reporting.
