Awards, honors, and special notice
Despite its modest size, The Patriot-News has consistently won top state journalism awards in competition with Pennsylvania's largest newspapers. In 2012, Patriot-News reporter Sara Ganim and staff, under the leadership of Editor-In-Chief David Newhouse, were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for breaking the story of the Penn State sex abuse scandal.[8]
In 2003, the paper won the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association’s G. Richard Dew Award for Journalistic Service for its coverage of the attempted sale of Hershey Foods. In 2004, the newspaper was named as one of "10 That Do It Right" by Editor & Publisher magazine. The newspaper has won the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association's Keystone Press Award Division I Sweepstakes, which goes to the large metro newspaper that wins the most journalism awards, in 2004, 2006, and 2010, competing against the newspapers in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Allentown as the smallest paper in that division.
The year 2004 also began a run in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association's Newspaper of the Year Awards unmatched in the contest's history. The Patriot-News has been either first or second place as the state's Newspaper of the Year for seven years in a row, with first-place wins in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2010. The contest includes more than 50 newspapers from across the state, including Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
The newspaper's reporters have won the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association's Distinguished Writing Award multiple times, most recently to reporter John Luciew in 2013.[9] The first award went to reporter Jim Lewis in 2001, 2004, and 2005. Reporter Ford Turner won second place in 2008 and first place in 2010.
In 2007, public watchdog reporter Jan Murphy won a First Amendment award from the Associated Press Managing Editors for her stories uncovering profligate spending at PHEAA, the state agency that gives college loans to students. That same year, reporter Ford Turner won the APME's Public Service award for uncovering an unusually high rate of cancer among residents of a small neighborhood of Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. Murphy also won first prize in investigative reporting from the National Education Writers Association for her stories on PHEAA spending.
The World Association of Newspapers Young Reader Prize for Newspaper in Education in 2007 was awarded to The Patriot-News for its SchoolHouse News program with the Harrisburg School District.
Investigative reporter Pete Shellem, who died in 2009, received widespread recognition for his work in freeing the innocent from prison. Shellem's stories in The Patriot-News resulted in the release of four people who had been convicted of murder: Patty Carbone, who had served 11 years; Steven Crawford, who had served 28 years; Barry Laughman, who had served 16 years; and David Gladden, who had served 12 years. His reporting also freed Charles Dubs, who had served five years on a rape conviction. In The New York Times obituary for Shellem, Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, called him "a rare, one-man journalism innocence project."[10]
Crime reporter and Penn State grad Sara Ganim began gaining national attention in the wake of the Penn State sex abuse scandal after coach Jerry Sandusky's indictment in November 2011. Ganim had written a substantial piece in March 2011, when few others were covering the story. Among other follow-ups, she then spoke to two of the mothers of alleged victims for the paper in the immediate wake of the indictment. "You can credit the Patriot-News with giving me the time a reporter needs to cover this kind of story," she said to a New York media columnist who specially noted her coverage.[11] Ganim garnered a number of awards and notices for the reporting[12][13][14][15] and, in March 2012, the Scripps Howard Award for Community Journalism.[16] In April 2012, Ganim and the news staff were awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for the coverage.[17]
