Post-Gazette Shale
Website Wins Top Prize
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
17 March 2012
Pipeline, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's
interactive website on news and issues surrounding development of
the Marcellus Shale, has won the top award for environmental
reporting in the Scripps Howard Foundation's National Journalism
Awards contest.
The Pipeline team, led by Erich Schwartzel and Elisabeth Ponsot
and comprising reporters in Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, Web
editors, data specialists and videographers, will receive $10,000
in prize money and be honored at a dinner in Detroit in late
April.
The environmental reporting category is one of 15 in the contest
that honor outstanding work from professional news organizations
across the country. Other winners announced Friday in this year's
competition include Danny Hakim and Russell Buettner of The New
York Times for investigative reporting for a year-long probe of
problems in state-run homes for the developmentally disabled; the
Arizona Republic for breaking news coverage of the shooting that
killed six and injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 12
others; the Boston Globe and columnist Brian McGrory for
commentary; and The (Harrisburg) Patriot-News and reporter Sara
Ganim for community journalism for coverage of the Jerry Sandusky
child sex abuse scandal at Penn State. Two other contest
categories honor college journalism and mass communication
educators.
The Post-Gazette launched Pipeline in February 2011 as a specialty
news website that employs multimedia, social media and interactive
maps and that curates daily coverage from the PG and other news
organizations to provide an authoritative resource for Marcellus
Shale news and information. With funds provided through a grant to
the J-Lab at American University, Pipeline has been innovative in
using online tools to help tell the shale story.
It has been recognized in other contests, most notably as winner
in a category of the prestigious Online News Association's annual
competition.
Besides Mr. Schwartzel, a business writer, and Ms. Ponsot, a
multimedia producer, other key members of the Pipleline team are
Harrisburg bureau chief Laura Olson, interactive producer Laura
Schneiderman, videographer Steve Mellon and Matt Kennedy,
assistant managing editor for online content.
For a complete list of winners in the competition, go to http://www.shawards.org/winners