"Stop Mass Shootings: The Search for Solutions"

Recipient of the STAR ONLINE PACKAGE OF THE YEAR award in The Charles E. Green Awards (2022)

Josh Hinkle, Kate Winkle, Haley Cihock, John Thomas
KXAN-TV

Judge’s Comments:

KXAN’s multi-part series on Texas’ gun culture and solutions to mass shootings is a powerful display of reporting and writing. The blend of video and text, along with accessible interactive graphics, is a model for polished, in-depth online packages, and KXAN purposefully and thoughtfully reported – with context and using every digital tool at its disposal – the underpinnings of the state’s hyper gun culture, the impact of mass shootings and an all important discussion of solutions. The entries in the online category were exceptionally strong, ambitious in scope and polished in execution, but KXAN’s package of stories connected a wide range of issues in producing its far-reaching series. The package included gun law comparisons between states and countries, context that anchored the station’s impressive journalism, a look at the state’s porous gun ownership laws, the issue of mental health among shooters and the introduction of a state agency, little known to most Texans, designed as a clearinghouse for “suspicious activity.” KXAN also included a reader and viewer component, inviting its community to engage with the television station’s findings; this element -- increasingly is viewed as a pillar of effective online packages -- was well done. What’s more, the station’s leadership invited lawmakers in a letter to view the series as they explore one of the state’s most perplexing contemporary issues. Altogether, KXAN’s exhaustive series serves as a gold standard for online journalism packages that explore complex topics, many of which increasingly demand multifaceted storytelling.

Bill Celis
Journalist, Educator, Author

Judge’s Bio:

Bill Celis is a journalist, educator and author. For 20 years he worked at leading Texas and U.S. dailies. He is a former national correspondent for the New York Times and a former reporter and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He also worked for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as a general assignments reporter and for the El Paso Times State staff.

For 25 years he served as a professor of journalism, first at the University of Colorado at Boulder and at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where over 21 years he earned tenure and served as associate director, program director and associate dean responsible for undergraduate and graduate curriculum, assessment, recruitment, diversity in the classroom and the recruitment of diverse students, staff and faculty.

In 2010 he led the school-wide committee that produced the first diversity audit of any USC school, winning the 2012 Diversity and Equity Award from the Association of Educators of Mass Communication and Journalism.

Among other teaching awards, he won the 2018 Barry Bingham Fellowship, awarded annually to journalism educators for their work in diversity.

He is the author of, "Battle Rock: A One-Room School in America's Vanishing West" (Public Affairs, 2003), and is working on another book about disenfranchised children.

He earned his undergraduate degree in 1978 in journalism at Howard Payne University (Brownwood, Texas) and a master's degree in 1982 from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.  He lives in San Antonio, his hometown.

To watch the award-winning coverage from the team at KXAN-TV, click the links below:

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