NOLA.com and The Times-Picayune has won the Carolyn C. Mattingly Award for Mental Health Reporting for a project exploring the long-term impact of violence on children in a poor neighborhood in New Orleans.
“NOLA.com and The Times-Picayune journalists spent a year following a youth football team in a deeply troubled section of New Orleans to report on the devastating impact of exposure to unrelenting violence in their schools, their neighborhoods and their homes. The resulting project, ‘The Children of Central City,’ covers scientific angles and the children’s personal stories, woven together with heart-wrenching narrative elements and visuals.” said the National Press Foundation (NPF) panel of judges.
The Luv u Project and the NPF established this journalism award in 2015 to honor excellence in mental health reporting. The award honors the memory of Carolyn C. Mattingly, and her legacy of goodness. The award recognizes exemplary journalism that illuminates and advances the understanding of mental health issues and treatments for the illness. It carries a $10,000 prize.
The winning team of journalists include Jonathan Bullington, Richard Webster, Brett Duke, Emma Scott and Haley Correll.
We congratulate and thank our winners for their extraordinary body of work,” said C. Richard Mattingly, founder of The Luv u Project. “This team effort to document and vividly describe the importance of mental health, especially for children, is invaluable.”
The journalists will receive the Mattingly award at a reception in Washington, D.C., in May.
The judges gave honorable mentions to:
- HuffPost, for a deeply reported story on increasing suicide rates in the U.S. and what can be done about them.
- Univision, for a story and video on trauma suffered by children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The judges selected NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune’s work from 58 entries. This year’s judges were Amalie Nash of USA Today Network, Carole Feldman of The Associated Press, Rafael Lorente of the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, and Robert Meyers, president emeritus of NPF.