2024
The stories by Investigate Midwest and Flatwater Free Press on Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen’s global hog enterprise and water quality near some of the operations received the top business reporting award for government (small division) from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing in its 2024 Best of Business. The stories were reported and written by Assistant Editor and Senior Reporter Sky Chadde and FFP reporter Yanqi Xu. Read the full release.
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.
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.
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.
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.
