The Orlando Sentinel took home seven first-place awards, including two for its Toxic Secret series, at the Florida Society of News Editors’ annual statewide journalism awards luncheon Thursday.
Toxic Secret , a series reported by Kevin Spear, Martin Comas and Caroline Catherman that revealed a little-known chemical contaminated water in Seminole County, won first place for enterprise while the community forum livestream for the series won first place for live video. The series won second place in the features video category for the Sentinel’s staff piece on how 1,4-dioxane tainted Central Florida tap water.
“I’m so proud of our journalists, who strive to bring stories to the community that otherwise wouldn’t be told,” said Julie Anderson, editor-in-chief for the Orlando Sentinel Media Group and Sun Sentinel Media Group. “They deserve the recognition.”
The Sentinel also won first place for breaking news video and features video. Rich Pope won for his feature video on high school football player Alex Pring and again Pope, alongside Matthew J. Palm, won for their breaking news video on the Orlando Museum Basquiat scandal.
Desiree Stennett’s Hungerford School land saga story about the proposed sale of the land of a historic private boarding school for Black students in Eatonville took first place for community leadership.
Two Sentinel podcasts won awards this year: Theme Park Rangers, DeSantis vs. Disney by Skyler Swisher, Wesley Alden and Katie Rice took first place while Swamp Things by Edgar Thompson, Wesley Alden and Mark Long took second place.
Together with the Sun Sentinel, the Orlando Sentinel won first place for niche site/app for the series Explore Florida & The Caribbean by Cassie Armstrong, Mark Gauert and Anderson Greene.
The Sentinel’s Orlando Magic beat reporter, Jason Beede, took second place for sports reporting while longtime columnist Scott Maxwell won second place for his columns.
For feature writing Cristobal Reyes took third place for his piece on Oscar Mack’s Secret, the story of a Black man in Kissimmee who’s family believed for nearly a century he had been lynched by the Ku Klux Klan.
In third place for beat reporting was the Sentinel’s Amy Drew Thompson, food and dining reporter. The Sentinel took home third place in two photography categories: feature photography went to senior photographer Joe Burbank and Willie J. Allen Jr. won third place for sports photography.
Silas Morgan, who recently joined the Sentinel after graduating from the University of Florida, won first place for breaking news in the student category for a story he reported for UF’s Fresh Take Florida news service.
The FSNE awards are open to newspapers across the state. The newspapers compete in different divisions based on their circulation, with the Sentinel going up against the largest newspapers in the state.
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