"Uvalde: One Year In"

STORYTELLING CATEGORY — SHOWCASE Silver

KSAT 12
Contributors: KSAT 12 Newsroom
04/23/2023

The Uvalde community is an important part of KSAT 12’s footprint in Texas.

On May 24, 2022, KSAT sent reporters 90 miles west to a community that we’ve been covering for decades.

That day, our newsroom made a commitment to be in Uvalde long after the nation's gaze shifted to the next big headline.

A year later, KSAT published an interactive, immersive article as the digital element to supplement our one-hour documentary project “One Year In: Uvalde.”

The project is the culmination of 12 months of heartwrenching and professional reporting, dozens of interviews, countless nights in Uvalde and constant pushback from some local and state officials.

We formed personal relationships with the families who lost their loved ones, attended graveside birthday parties, covered their march on the Texas Capitol as they called for gun reform. We cheered on the siblings of the victims as life barreled forward without their loved ones and held them as they cried when the pain of their grief was too much to bear.

This endeavor to tell the story of May 24, 2022, and the year that followed gave us the opportunity to meet several of the surviving children who were trapped with a gunman, terrified for 77 minutes in their elementary school classrooms.

Mayah Zamora, now 12 years old, spent over 60 days in the hospital after being shot in her arms, chest, back, and hands. She shared her love of painting and Taylor Swift, and displayed a will to not just live, but thrive that will never be duplicated.

Her classmates AJ and Jaydien shared their visions for the future, to become football players. Though, AJ's dream may be hindered by the gunshot he suffered to his thigh.

In her first on-camera interview, Sylvia Uriegas took us back to that fateful day when her school bus was used as a medical transport for children covered in blood, while ambulances served as mobile morgues transporting the mangled bodies of 4th graders and their teachers to the hospital.

The entire package is beautifully reported, shot, written and presented. Every journalist involved in the project worked with care and professionalism, which can be seen in the final product.

The interactive article was the first one our newsroom and station group (Graham Media) built using a newly acquired tool called Ceros.

Our promise to Uvalde did not end with the one-year mark of this tragedy, it has and will continue for years to come.

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Submitted by Kolten Parker.