The Center for Integrity in News Reporting presented $5,000 awards for objective reporting to 11 journalists in six states in June, the busiest month yet for a state awards program that launched this year.
Winners in Georgia, Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas accepted the awards at their state press association conventions between June 12 and June 28, and each award was the first CFINR has presented in that state. Counting earlier wins in South Carolina and Virginia, the Center has honored 14 journalists at eight newsrooms this year and awarded $40,000 in state prize money.
The state Integrity in News Reporting Awards are funded by a three-year, $210,000 grant from the SNPA Foundation covering 14 Southern and Southeastern states, a $90,000 grant from the Stanton Foundation covering the six New England states, and additional gifts extending the program to Ohio and Iowa, bringing the total to 22 states.
In most participating states, the $5,000 prize is the largest attached to any news contest category.
Georgia. Hunter Riggall of the Marietta Daily Journal won the first Georgia award June 12 at the Georgia Press Association convention on Jekyll Island, honored for a series of stories reporting on homelessness in his community. The prize, presented by George McCanless, the Center’s vice president of partnerships, came on a 32-award night for the Journal.
Texas. Sally Sexton, managing editor of the Weatherford Democrat, accepted the first Texas award June 19 in Dallas. Chosen from 14 entries, her winning coverage documented two teachers who verbally and physically abused a student with disabilities, an incident captured on video. After her reporting and the public scrutiny that followed, the teachers and the superintendent involved lost their jobs and faced criminal charges.
“The judges noted that there was no gotcha coming,” said CFINR Executive Director Rufus Friday, who presented the award. “This reporter let the facts speak, and they spoke loudly in a small town where almost everyone knows the people involved.”
Tennessee. At the Tennessee Press Association’s awards luncheon in Franklin on June 25, Friday told the room, “This year’s Tennessee winner is in this room right now. And they have no idea.” The surprise went to Drew Wheeler of the McNairy County News, honored for coverage that revisited the death of Pauline Pusser, wife of “Walking Tall” Sheriff Buford Pusser, after a new state investigation reached a dramatically different conclusion. “This is integrity in journalism at its best,” one judge wrote.
Alabama. The inaugural Alabama CFINR Award of Excellence went to The Cullman Tribune for its “Hanceville Police Department Investigation Series,” credited to Lauren Estes, Noah Galilee, Nick Griffin and W.C. Mann. The series chronicled a scandal that ended with a grand jury calling for the department’s abolition and six arrests.
“This work is not about taking sides,” said Galilee, the Tribune’s publisher. “It is about following procedures, reviewing records, asking questions, giving all sides the opportunity to respond and keeping our opinions out of the reporting.”
Mississippi. At the Mississippi Press Association’s annual meeting in Biloxi on June 27, the inaugural Objectivity and Integrity in Reporting Prize went to The Dispatch of Columbus, where Zack Plair, Emma McRae and Cadence Harvey shared the prize for coverage of a Columbus Police Department officer who falsely blamed a civilian for a high-speed crash. The judges called the articles “a model for how to present a restrained tone — no dramatic storytelling; no emotionally manipulative victim descriptions; and minimal rhetorical framing.”
Arkansas. That same weekend in Eureka Springs, Chris Fulton of the Mountain Home Observer won the first Arkansas award, presented by CFINR’s Cassandra Webb, for a series documenting the Arkansas Department of Human Services’ failure to act on the severe mistreatment of a Mountain Home teenager despite 29 documented hotline complaints over 11 years. The boy’s guardians pleaded guilty in May and each received a 20-year sentence, and the case has prompted legislative hearings and calls to overhaul the agency.
Before the summer: South Carolina and Virginia
The program’s first winner came March 6 in Columbia, where Tony Bartelme of The Post and Courier won the first South Carolina award for “41 seconds,” an in-depth account of a Marine pilot’s decision to eject from a failing F-35B fighter jet over North Charleston. A month later in Lynchburg, Grace Mamon and Tad Dickens of Cardinal News won the first Virginia award for a series examining data-center expansion and its effects on rural communities, a body of work the judge called “very down the middle.”
Presenting the awards in Dallas and Franklin, Friday used the same words to describe what judges in every state were asked to find: reporting that exhibits “the courage not to fear, and the discipline not to favor.” The phrase echoes Adolph Ochs, the Tennessee newspaperman who promised his readers the news “impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of any party.” The successor to his Chattanooga paper is owned today by WEHCO Media, whose chairman, Walter E. Hussman Jr., founded the Center in 2024.
The urgency behind the program is measurable. Gallup’s September 2025 poll put American trust in the news media at 28%, its lowest point in 50 years, and 34% of Americans now say they have no trust in the media at all.
The state program extends the Center’s national awards, now in their third year, which carry $25,000 prizes, more than the Pulitzer Prize pays, in six categories. Entries grew from 102 in the program’s first year to 397 this year, submitted from at least 35 states, and beginning in 2027 the national awards will be renamed the Benjamin Franklin Prize for Impartial, Objective News Reporting.
With state awards established in 22 states and more presentations to come this summer, the Center’s goal remains what it has been from the start: rebuilding trust in American journalism by recognizing, and rewarding, reporting that is fair, impartial, accurate and objective.
If your state press association is interested in bringing a $5,000 award for impartial, objective news reporting to your state, CFINR is interested in partnering with you to find a way to make it happen.
Contact:
Rufus Friday, Executive Director
rfriday@cfinr.org
CFINR.org
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