Sacramento Bee honored 27 times at California Journalism Awards for 2021 achievements
The California News Publishers Association recognized The Sacramento Bee with more than two dozen awards in its annual ceremony last month, honoring the newspaper for its print and digital journalism achievements in 2021.
The Bee earned 27 total top-five finishes from CNPA, including first place in four print journalism categories, and swept the top three places for profile stories by large daily print publications.
Capitol Bureau reporter Sophia Bollag won first prize for a deep dive on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s battle with dyslexia. Breaking news reporter Michael McGough took second place for a story about an El Dorado County political appointee who posed for photos with a group of Proud Boys while dressed as Santa. And State Worker reporter Wes Venteicher earned third for a profile on controversial, embattled union president Richard Louis Brown.
Reporters Jason Pohl and Sawsan Morrar along with visual journalist Renée C. Byer won first-place honors for coverage of youth and education by daily newspapers with large circulation, for their dramatic and emotional account of Sacramento students stranded in Afghanistan amid last year’s withdrawal of U.S. troops.
“From the first paragraph, this story captures the heart,” CNPA judges wrote.
Visual journalist Paul Kitagaki Jr. earned first place for wildfire photography, for a striking image of a firefighter staring up at flames from the Caldor Fire as it raged in the Lake Tahoe Basin.
The Sacramento Bee’s design staff also won first, second and fourth places for inside page layout and design, for the newspaper’s Nov. 10, Oct. 13 and Nov. 17 print editions, respectively.
The Bee won another second-place award for best artistic photo, for Xavier Mascareñas’ shot of June’s supermoon over the Placer County Fair in Roseville.
Food reporter Benjy Egel’s list of the Sacramento area’s Top 50 restaurants, and accompanying webpage layouts and graphics compiled by Egel, Sohail Al-Jamea, Acton H. Gorton and Nathaniel Levine each earned third place in arts and entertainment coverage and online story presentation page layout and design, respectively.
Videos by Mascareñas and Jenn Molina about a white supremacist church in Northern California and by Byer touring a homeless encampment along the Sacramento River finished third and fourth, respectively, in the news category for video journalism.
The list of winners in CNPA’s California Journalism Awards was shared in rolling announcements posted to Twitter over the last two weeks of May, then posted in full to the association’s website.
Among other honorees:
▪ Theresa Clift and Byer won third place in public service journalism for their coverage of homelessness.
▪ Morrar, Molly Sullivan and Sam Stanton won third in wildfire feature coverage for “Stories of loss and survival from inside California’s Caldor Fire.”
▪ Tony Bizjak, Dale Kasler and Reese won fourth in land-use reporting for their coverage of Folsom’s growing blueprint and associated water problems.
▪ Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks and Phillip Reese took fourth place in enterprise news stories, for their investigation into how a lack of sidewalks in Sacramento neighborhoods endanger and kill Black residents.
▪ Yousef Baig took fourth place in columns, for opinion columns he penned about COVID-19 vaccine decisions and affordable housing in Sacramento.
▪ Mascareñas took fourth place in feature photography and artistic photography for photos of a young girl touching the “Bacteria Bear” statue outside the governor’s office and shots of the Nutcracker Ballet, respectively.
▪ Stanton and Venteicher took fifth place in in-depth reporting for their coverage of deadly hazing at California State Prison, Sacramento.
▪ Kasler took fifth place in agricultural reporting for his coverage of water cutoffs to farmers amid drought.
▪ Jack Ohman won fifth place for his editorial cartoon, “Gavin and Hothouse.”
This story was originally published June 3, 2022 at 1:07 PM.
