A collaborative project about Chicago’s handling of its massive number of lead water pipes—a public health hazard—has won a reporting award from the National Association of Black Journalists.
The “Salute to Excellence” award is the latest in a list of honors for “Lead City,” a series Inside Climate News reported alongside WBEZ and Grist.
The team discovered that Chicago—which has more lead pipes than any other U.S. city—was planning to replace the toxic service lines 30 years behind the federal deadline to do so and blew past another deadline to warn residents if their pipes are made of lead. Mapping the service lines, the newsrooms found the lead pipes are a citywide scourge but hit Black and Latino neighborhoods hardest.
The newsrooms also produced an interactive tool allowing Chicago residents to find out if their water pipe is made of lead or suspected to contain it, with tips on how to protect themselves, if so.
The reporting team included Keerti Gopal and Peter Aldhous from Inside Climate News, Grist/WBEZ’s Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco, Amy Qin from WBEZ and Clayton Aldern from Grist.
“Beyond the public service aspect of this reporting, what makes this award particularly gratifying is our partnership with Grist, another great climate newsroom, and WBEZ, the media powerhouse in Chicago,” said Vernon Loeb, ICN’s executive editor. “The collaboration is a real validation of our model, which is always to expand our reach by working with other newsrooms.”
The project won an award for specialty reporting in the National Association of Black Journalists’ contest. Earlier honors included a win in the investigative reporting category of the regional Edward R. Murrow Awards and finalist honors from the Institute for Nonprofit News, the Society of Environmental Journalists, the National Headliner Awards, the Public Media Journalists Association and the Chicago Headline Club.
“This is incredible reporting and just plain inspiring to see these journalists coming together to produce this work,” an Institute for Nonprofit News judge wrote about the coverage. “The opportunities for community engagement through the tools that were built here? Incredible. Heroic work here.”
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