PNNA: Dolly Connelly Winners

Recognizing initiative, thoroughness and lucid writing about environmental issues and controversies in the Pacific Northwest.

Winner Archive

2005 Dolly Connelly Winners

SEATTLE – Christopher Dunagan of the Kitsap Sun is winner of the 2005 Dolly Connelly Award for excellence in environmental journalism. The award was given out on Thursday, November 10, at the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association annual meeting at The Davenport Hotel in Spokane, Washington.
Dunagan won for the project “Thieves Target Old Maple: Two types of Wood Found Occasionally in Big Leaf Maple are Prized by Guitar Makers Throughout the World.”
A second place award went to Patty Henetz of The Salt Lake Tribune for “A Poison Wind: Toxic Mercury Blows into Utah from Nevada.”
The award winner receives $750; the second place award is $250.
Of Dunagan’s winning entry, Seattle Post-Intelligencer managing editor David McCumber, a judge in the contest, said: “It spotlights a problem that’s evidently growing but heretofore unpublicized. It’s quite fascinating: One doesn’t think of guitar makers as the end-user market for eco-criminals.”
“It was concisely written, highly original, and we learned something from it,” added Timothy Egan, national correspondent with the New York Times and a fellow judge.
Established in 1998, the Connelly award is given out each year by the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Foundation. It honors the memory of Dolly Connelly, who worked as a freelance journalist and correspondent for Time-Life for nearly 40 of her 50 years as a photojournalist.
The Connelly award was designed to encourage entries from the region’s medium and small-size daily newspapers. Entries are not accepted from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Seattle Times or The Oregonian.
Judging the contest this year were McCumber, Egan, Joni Balter of The Seattle Times, and Joel Connelly, a columnist with the Post-Intelligencer.
In the contest’s short history, winners have come from newspapers in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Alaska and British Columbia.
The Connelly award was established in 1998 by endowment gifts from Joel Connelly, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

2004 Dolly Connelly Winners

First place winner: John Dodge, The Olympian

Dodge won the award for "Tracking Hazardous Waste," a two-day series on toxic waste sites in Thurston County. Dodge is the first two-time winner of the award, which was announced during the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association’s annual meeting Nov. 11 in Seattle. He has been The Olympian’s environmental reporter for many years.
State law requires toxic sites be listed and ranked for toxicity by the state Department of Ecology, but little of that information has been provided to the public. The series mapped the DOE listed sites, identified the toxic material and degree of toxicity, how it got there and who’s responsible for cleaning it up. It also revealed about 40 additional sites that may be listed after DOE determines their level of hazard.
Contest judge Timothy Egan of The New York Times praised the depth of Dodge’s research and the case he built for strengthening laws that govern the disclosure of hazardous waste on undeveloped land.
Dodge’s series for The Olympian, “South Sound Growth: Where do we grow from here?,” won the award in 2000. It revealed the hidden costs of growth.

Second place winner: Judy Fahys with Dan Harrie and Kristen Moulton, The Salt Lake Tribune

The contest judges also voted a second-place award to Judy Fahys, Dan Harrie and Kristen Moulton of The Salt Lake Tribune for a series that revealed and eventually halted a plan for depositing in a Utah hazardous waste landfill some highly concentrated radioactive waste from a federal cleanup site in Ohio.
The series was described as “crusading, hardball journalism in a place that desperately needs it” by David McCumber, managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a contest judge.
It began with "Hotter waste for Utah?" and ended six stories later with “Envirocare pulls waste bid.”

Mike Lee of the Tri-City Herald is winner of the 2003 Dolly Connelly Award for Excellence in Environmental Journalism. Lee won the award for "Bitter Harvest", a series that chronicled more than a decade of environmental law-breaking, and disregard for public safety, by Mike and Gerald "Spud" Brown, Royal Basin brothers who operate Washington State's largest organic farm. Since's Lee's articles, which also dealt with the impotence of regulatory agencies, the Browns have been indicted by a federal grand jury for illegally dumping hazardous substances, and fined by the state Department of Ecology.
"Mike Lee of the Tri-City Herald should be commended for his courage and thoroughness in exposing one of the area's largest, most influential land-owning families for the dangerous, destructive scofflaws they are, and for documenting the state's lackadaisical response -- so typical of the Department of Ecology," said David McCumber, managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and a contest judge. "This is the kind of journalism most papers of this size never even consider, and it seems to typify the work this award aims to recognize," McCumber added.
Timothy Egan, national correspondent for The New York Times, and a fellow judge, commented: "Bitter Harvest investigated a powerful local interest, and did so with great skill and courage. Mike Lee took on the big boys, and forced the regulators to move."

Second place winner: Karen Dorn Steele and Benjamin Shors, The Spokesman-Review

The contest judges also voted a second-place award to Karen Dorn Steele and Benjamin Shors of the Spokesman -Review in Spokane for a series entitled "Dirty Works".
"Dirty Works" dealt with the massive Superfund cleanup of mining wastes, scattered from Idaho's Silver Valley to Lake Roosevelt in Eastern Washington. The cleanup has brough conflict between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Idaho politicians. "Dirty Works is reporting in depth at its best: It is thorough, understanding of all sides, and written in a way that conveys complex issues to the ordinary reader," said Joel Connelly, columnist with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a judge.
Joni Balter, editorial writer with The Seattle Times and the fourth judge, described the Spokesman-Review series as "engrossing."

First place winner:

"Losing Ground," the Idaho State Journal’s multi-part report on the decline of native cutthroat trout throughout the West, is the winner of the 2002 Dolly Connelly Excellence in Environmental Journalism competition.
Timothy Egan, New York Times national correspondent and contest judge, described "Losing Ground" as "a superb piece of journalism" by the Pocatello-based Idaho State Journal.
"It’s inspiring to see a relatively small market newspaper do such a comprehensive job," Egan added. "The project combines a fine appreciation of Northwest history with its author’s unlimited imagination."
David McCumber, managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, praised Journal city editor Chris Hunt, author of the series.
"Hunt is a dedicated journalist who has not allowed his considerable responsibilities as city editor of the Journal detract from his energy, zeal and skill as a writer and reporter," said McCumber. "He pulled together in this series a story that has eluded a lot of newspapers with far bigger circulations and reputations.
"This is a very important story that has enormous implications. Just as many strains of cutthroat are ‘indicator’ species, the first to reflect – and suffer from – degradation to their environment, the story chronicling the decline of these native fish is a first alarm, a cry of warning to all of us who love the West."
Joni Balter, editorial writer with The Seattle Times, added: "Chris Hunt went everywhere, and thought of every angle."

"Eco-Invaders: Non-native Species Take Hold in Northwest," a project of The Columbian of Vancouver, Wash., received second place honors. It featured author Erik Robinson’s lucid writing about a complicated topic, the invasion of spartina grass that threatens the ecology of Washington’s Willapa Bay. The bay is renowned for its shorebird populations and is home to Southwest Washington’s lucrative oyster industry.
"This is a classic example of how to take a topic that sounds boring and make it interesting and important," said Egan.

First place winner:

Mike Stark, Karen Mockler and Patrick Webb of The Daily Astorian won first place for "Life at the Brink: The Columbia River Estuary in Peril." One judge of this year's contest, Timothy Egan, national correspondent of The New York Times, described "Life at the Brink" as "beautifully written, a
weaving of human stories to reveal the perils of pollution and forces shaping the Northwest's greatest river."
"It constituted a huge commitment by a small paper," added fellow judge Joni Balter, an editorial page writer at The Seattle Times.

Stephen Hume of The Sun, Vancouver, B.C., won second place for a 13-part series,"An Energy Odyssey."Joel Connelly, a judge and columnist with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, praised the sweep of Hume's project. "It ranged over the energy resources of Western Canada, discussed the consequences of extraction on native peoples, and bluntly questioned why Canadians should bear the pains in order to supply America with energy gains," Connelly said. The award to Hume marks the first time a Canadian
newspaper has won or placed in the competition.

First place winner:

An 18-month project by John Dodge of The Olympian, "South Sound Growth: Where Do We Grow From Here?" Dodge's series examined the related topics of sprawl in urban areas, increasing traffic, and the question of whether growth is paying for growth. The answer, in most cases, was no.

"I look for somebody whose examination and writing go beyond what both sides say, who gets beneath the claims: Dodge's series revealed the hidden costs of growth,'' said Timothy Egan, New York Times national correspondent and a judge in the competition.

The series was of a complexity that made it "very difficult to write well, which underscores the exceptional job that John Dodge did,'' Egan added.

"It woke me up: I thought sprawl was something felt in King, Pierce and Snohomish Counties -- it brought an important issue to life,'' said Joni Balter, an editorial page columnist at The Seattle Times, and another judge in the contest.

Second place winner:

A team of writers from the Bellingham Herald for their project: "Pipeline Explosion: One Year Later." The series dealt with impacts, local and national, of the 1999 pipeline explosion that killed three young people in Bellingham and scorched a creek enjoyed for years by thousands of local residents.

"The series was very moving, full of human sketches," Egan said. "But they didn't lose the broader perspective. A year later, the issue of stronger pipeline safety legislation is hung up in politics.''

In Balter's words, the series "hit every angle possible" in what was a human tragedy, environmental disaster and public policy issue. Kevin Hamilton, a partner in Seattle's Perkins Coie law firm and frequent book reviewer for The Seattle Times, joined the judging panel this year. He is a former editor of the Georgetown Law Review.

"I was prepared to brush aside the pipeline pieces -- this was obviously an enormously prominent story and one that was extensively covered," Hamilton wrote. But Hamilton was impressed by the series the further he read into it. "The series covered a lot of ground, from the technical how-did-this-happen to the more human interest profiles of the families who lost their kids," he concluded.