Detroit News reporter Kara Berg wins 2024 Wade McCree Advancement of Justice award

Detroit News reporter Kara Berg was one of four journalists honored this week by the Michigan Press Association Foundation as winner of the 2024 Wade H. McCree Advancement of Justice Awards.

Berg received the coveted journalism award Sunday in East Lansing for her June 2023 special series "Michigan Kids keep dying on Child Protective Services’ watch,” an investigation that documented a string of tragic cases of child abuse and neglect in the state's Children's Protective Services.

Berg's "reporting offered potential solutions for policymakers to consider as they pursue their own investigations and justice for these victims of child abuse and neglect," MPA Foundation officials said in a statement.

"In her years-long reporting, Kara started to see a pattern of cases where kids were seriously injured or killed after family, friends, etc, made CPS reports and the cases were either investigated or punted to the side by investigators," MPA Foundation officials said.

"When a 5-year-old boy was found dead in a suburban Detroit house his aunt dubbed the 'house of horrors,' Kara began a deeper investigation into how this state agency was handling repeated abuse allegations."

Among Berg winning the award were Bridge Michigan reporter Lauren Gibbons, Detroit Free Press reporter Andrea Sahouri and WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) reporter Heather Catallo. The McCree awards are based on the significance and informative level of journalism, as well as the impact on changing and improving the legal and law enforcement systems, the press association foundation said.

The winners were selected at the 2024 Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame dinner at the Kellogg Center in East Lansing. Selected by a panel of three judges representing law and media, the awardees were independently reviewed and determined out of 11 entries from across Michigan.

Also recognized at the event were three former News staffers: Eric Freedman, John Bebow and Molly Abraham, who were inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame.

The McCree award is named for the late Judge Wade H. McCree Jr. (1920-87), who advocated for the press' role in a free society as a federal judge, law professor and U.S. solicitor general.

In April 2020, former News reporter Karen Bouffard won the award for "Healing Justice," an in-depth probe of America's mental health services and incarceration.

More:The Detroit News named Michigan's Newspaper of the Year