AHCJ member Hal Bernton, with colleagues Justin Mayo and Steve Ringman, won the James V. Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism for their two-part series in The Seattle Times, “Logging and Landslides: What Went Wrong.” The project used mapping software to show that clear-cut logging accounted for “nearly one-third of the landslides” in southwestern Washington.
AHCJ member Leah Beth Ward of the Yakima (Wash.) Herald-Republic received a special citation for her series, “Hidden Wells, Dirty Water,” an investigation of contaminated drinking water wells in rural areas.
Ward, who detailed how she reported the project in an article for AHCJ, found a failure of government regulatory practices, heavy influence on the state legislature by the dairy industry and an impasse among state agencies responsible for clean water – both drinking and groundwater.
The honors were announced by James Bettinger, director of the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists at Stanford University.
Judges of the contest were John Daley, a reporter at KSL-Salt Lake City and a 2007-08 Knight Fellow; Philip Hilts, director, Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at MIT; Judy Pasternak, writer and author, and winner of the Risser Prize in 2007; and Paul Rogers, environment writer, San Jose Mercury News, and managing editor, “QUEST,” KQED, San Francisco.
The prize is given in the name of James V. Risser, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and director emeritus of the Knight Fellowships program. The Risser Prize was established in 2005 and is open to print, broadcast and online journalists writing about environmental issues in western regions of Canada, Mexico and the United States.
