Wausau Pilot & Review
Wausau Pilot & Review took home a first-place award and was a finalist in a second category in the Local Independent Online Newspaper Publishers awards, national honors that draw hundreds of applicants from newsrooms across the country.
The awards were announced Friday at the annual LION conference in Austin, Texas. Dylan Smith, publisher of Tucson Sentinel in Arizona, accepted the award on Wausau Pilot & Review’s behalf.
Work by Editor and Publisher Shereen Siewert earned a first-place finish in the Accountability Award category, which “recognizes general excellence in journalistic impact that led to the accountability of those in positions of power and a demonstrable positive outcome for the affected community.”
Siewert’s series of stories centered on Wausau’s new drinking water facility upgrade, revealing that city leaders already knew that the city’s water contained toxic chemicals at levels higher than those recommended by government officials when the facility was planned. But the city kept the threat of harm from the public and failed to include technology in the new, taxpayer-funded facility that would remove the chemicals from the water in the future. When PFAS levels went public, the city was forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants and other tools to add the technology to the new system, which is not yet online.
Reporter Damakant Jayshi was a finalist in the Outstanding Coverage Award category, which recognizes “general excellence in journalistic impact that builds increased awareness or influences public conversation about a specific issue that reverberates throughout a community.” Wausau Pilot & Review continues to defend a defamation lawsuit stemming from the reporting, which focused on the ‘Community for All’ discussions in Wausau and Marathon County last year.
Amid a long and difficult fight for equality faced by some residents of Wausau and Marathon County as they sought for policies that ensured fairness and justice for all residents regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation or gender, Jayshi gave readers an in-depth look at the divisive rhetoric that divided both residents and city and county leaders. The reporting led to serious repercussions including death threats, lawsuits and an ongoing battle between dueling ideologies that continues to this day.
The LION Awards celebrate the best of independent online media across the U.S. and Canada. The mission of LION Publishers is to foster the viability and excellence of locally focused independent online news organizations and cultivate their connections to their communities through education.
