Series about the sexual assault crisis in rural Alaska up for annual Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting - Entrepreneur Generations

A newspaper series about the sexual assault crisis in rural Alaska is one of six finalists for the annual Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, awarded by Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.

The Anchorage Daily News partnered with ProPublica's Local Reporting Network to produce Lawless, a series that uncovered a sexual assault crisis in rural Alaska and how the lack of public-safety services makes it worse. After the series ran, U.S. Attorney General William Bar declared the lack of law enforcement in rural Alaska a federal emergency, and the Department of Justice has promised more than $52 million in federal funding to improve the situation. The U.S. Attorney in Anchorage also announced the hiring of additional rural prosecutors, and Gov. Mike Dunleavy said the state will hire 15 additional state troopers.

Daily News reporter Kyle Hopkins pursued the story after he discovered that more than 70 rural towns didn't have local law enforcement, and that the state hadn't enforced village police hiring standards. In some towns, convicted criminals, including sex offenders, had been hired as police officers, Clark Merrefield reports for Journalist's Resource.

The series also recently won a Scripps Howard Award in the Community Journalism category.

The Goldsmith Prize winner receives $25,000, and the other five finalists receive $10,000. The prize is funded by the Greenfield Foundation. The winner was meant to be announced Thursday, but the awards ceremony was canceled because of coronavirus precautions. The winner will be announced soon online, according to the Goldsmith Awards website.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/3cYVCMg Series about the sexual assault crisis in rural Alaska up for annual Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting - Entrepreneur Generations

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