On September 6, 2024 a crowd of journalists, students, and members of the MIT community gathered at the MIT Museum to celebrate local science journalism and the achievements of one team in particular: the Cicero Independiente and MuckRock collaboration that received the 2024 McElheny Award for Local and Regional Science Journalism for “The Air We Breathe,” a series investigating air quality in Cicero, IL.
To be among so many people who cared so deeply about local science journalism and it’s future felt like being part of a family, said Victor K. McElheny, the founding director of KSJ, who endowed the McElheny Award along with his wife Ruth McElheny.
Deborah Blum, director of KSJ and emcee for the evening, opened the ceremony by describing her own background in local science journalism, and offering a brief reflection on the importance of authentic community connections: “This award is really important to all of us. My career in journalism began as a local journalist. … I know how much it makes a difference, and I know that people in communities trust their local journalists in the way they do not trust the journalists who just parachute in from outside. So these are voices that matter.”
In his remarks, Victor K. McElheny praised the collaborative nature of the winning series, in which fourteen different journalists received bylines. “I am happy in looking at the panoply of people who are involved in this year’s prize,” McElheny said. “It really shows how many different crafts and how many different kinds of commitments come together to make a piece of journalism that actually affects the safety of people.”
Derek Kravitz and Dillon Bergin represented Muckrock, and April Alonso represented the Cicero Independiente as they accepted the McElheny Award on behalf of their respective publications.
In a short speech, Kravitz spoke about the immeasurable value that local newsrooms like the Cicero Independiente bring to their communities:
“Few newsrooms have the resources or inclination to do this type of work. … The Independiente is the go-to and only source of community news in Cicero. That 100,000 person community, of which nearly 90 percent are Latino and 60 percent are undocumented immigrants, has borne the brunt of repeated targeted attacks from politicians, businesses, and others who have vested interests in keeping grandfathered industrial polluters operating at full capacity without additional regulations or outside scrutiny.”
Judges for McElheny Award described “The Air We Breathe” as the product of a “scrappy” effort from a team that managed to tell a big, impactful story with limited resources.
Kravitz embraced that adjective and reframed it as resilience. “Yes, we are scrappy. There’s a lot of reasons for that. … I mention this because local journalists across the country, including the Independiente … they juggle news coverage while also grappling with reader distrust and blind partisanship. They face almost daily uncertainty about whether they’ll have jobs or savings or health care coverage for their families. They endure what feels like unending negative attacks on their reporting and their character, trolling, and invective that cuts deep because we so deeply care about our work and our communities.”
In her remarks, Alonso, who co-founded the Cicero Independiente in order to help fill what she saw as a yawning gap in local coverage, spoke to the importance of the community connections that the Independiente has built in Cicero.
“Our newsroom is guided by what the community tells us are their concerns,” she said. “And we have a really strong feedback loop and relationship building with community members to be able to have their trust.”
Added Alonso, “This award, I feel like, wouldn’t be possible without the community members that were reaching out to us. … So thank you to the community members.”
Other team members present at the ceremony included Brian Herrera, who created graphics and illustrations for the series, and Jesus J. Montero who shot the drone footage for the series.
Following the formal award ceremony, a panel on the importance of local science journalism offered a more conversational approach to uplifting the craft. The panel, moderated by Deborah Blum, included: Ellen Clegg, journalist and co-founder and co-chair of Brookline.News; Dan Kennedy, Professor of journalism at Northeastern University; Chris Faraone, Editorial Director of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism; and the Cicero Independiente’s Alonso.
On the question of “why does local science journalism matter,” Faraone explained that impactful stories like “The Air We Breathe” wouldn’t get told if outlets like the Cicero Independiente weren’t there to do the reporting. “Superman, superwoman, not coming to town. … This is one of those situations where if you don’t do it, it’s unlikely that somebody else is going to show up and do it.”
Added Clegg: “We live our lives locally. … It’s where I shop. It’s where my neighbors are. … And there’s a nationalization of news going on that’s very deliberate and very disturbing. It’s designed to inculcate fear, fear of vaccines, fear of your neighbor. It’s divisive.”
Blum noted that, as part of their reporting, the Cicero Independiente and Muckrock installed air quality monitors in Cicero and nearby areas to gather data on local pollutants, exemplifying the vital public service role that local science journalism can play. “There’s a whole sociology of something called undone science in which government itself doesn’t look,” Blum said. “And until you have journalists willing to take the time and the trouble to put those monitors out there and to actually look, we don’t know.”
“Local science journalism is a small part of a big web of others’ work to get critical information about technology, health and the environment to communities when they need it,” award recipient Bergin said after the ceremony. “When it feels like that small part goes uncelebrated, I’ll revisit the memory of receiving this honor with my colleagues.”
For Alonso, it is an award that will carry lasting meaning. “To have ‘kids’ from Cicero represented in such a prestigious space—one that many in our community might not have access to—was profoundly meaningful for us. Being able to present our community’s experiences in this way was deeply moving.”
Read more about “The Air We Breathe” and the fourteen people behind the investigation.
Read more about the McElheny Award for Local and Regional Science Journalism.
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