Detroit News reporters win 3 National Headliner Awards

The Detroit News won three national journalism awards, including first place in political coverage, in the 90th annual National Headliner Awards that were announced Monday.

Lansing reporter Craig Mauger won first place for best political coverage for several stories, including one that described a recording of former President Donald Trump pressuring two Republican election officials in Wayne County not to sign the certification of the 2020 presidential election, said contest judges.

The Headliner Awards is one of the oldest and most prestigious annual journalism contests in the nation.

On a Nov. 17, 2020, phone call, which also involved then Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Trump told GOP Wayne County canvassers Monica Palmer and William Hartmann they'd look "terrible" if they signed the documents after they first voted in opposition and then later in the same meeting voted to approve certification of the county’s election results, according to recordings of the meeting reviewed by The News.

The story marked the first time Trump's comments in the meeting had been revealed publicly.

Other stories by Mauger revealed the extent of a scheme by false electors in Michigan, said judges of the contest sponsored by the Press Club of Atlantic City.

“(The stories) contributed to the country’s understanding of Trump’s efforts to change the results in the Electoral College,” the judges wrote.

In other categories, Carol Thompson, The News' environmental reporter, won third place for best environmental writing by an individual or team in a top-20 media market.

Thompson wrote a five-part series, “Guarding the Great Lakes," that investigated the impact of climate change on each of the five Great Lakes.

One of Thompson's stories looked at how warming water is threatening Lake Huron's shipwrecks and forcing researchers to bring up artifacts they thought they could safely leave submerged for centuries.

Another found that the effects of a warming atmosphere could re-release old toxic material that has been stored on the landscape and send it straight to the warming water of Lake Superior, meaning the pollutants are more likely to get into the food chain.

In another category, Detroit News courts reporter Kara Berg won third place for best newspaper series in a top-20 media market.

Berg wrote a special report about how Michigan children were dying from abuse and neglect, and how families believed the state Child Protective Services wasn’t doing enough to prevent the deaths.

Berg's stories recounted how Trinity Chandler and 370 other Michigan children died from abuse or neglect in the past 10 years and was among the 33 children in 2020 who died of child abuse or neglect when their parents had a previously investigated complaint by CPS within the past two years.

Trinity, a Holly 3-year-old, was dying when a caseworker visited her on a Friday in December 2020 and saw fresh injuries. But the case worker's supervisors told her to wait over a weekend to notify centralized intake of Trinity's new injuries, according to state documents, and Trinity died the next day.

Experts blame overworked caseworkers, inadequate treatment options for substance abuse and too many children being taken from their homes, clogging up the system and putting them at risk of being hurt or neglected in foster homes.

The national awards follow The Detroit News being named Michigan's Newspaper of the Year by the Michigan Press Association and the MPA awarding Berg a Wade H. McCree Advancement of Justice Award for her reporting on troubles at CPS.

fdonnelly@detroitnews.com