Lomi Kriel & Lexi Churchill: ProPublica & The Texas Tribune

The Journalism Salute

On this episode, we’re joined by Lomi Kriel and Lexi Churchill.

They are 2 reporters on the team of journalists that just won The Collier Prize, a prestigious award given by The Collier Companies and The University of Florida for investigative journalism and political reporting specific to state governments.

The award was given for coverage on reporting on the actions and lack of actions by law enforcement that were responding to a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas that resulted in 21 deaths.

This team of journalists encompasses reporters from Pro Publica, The Texas Tribune, and PBS’ documentary series, Frontline. Lomi and Lexi are 2 of many who worked on this. They work jointly for ProPublica and the Tribune.

The stories we talk about are

“Someone Tell Me What To Do,” which describes the police response to the shooting in-depth.

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/05/uvalde-officer-student-trainings-mass-shootings/

“Reports Analyzing the Police Response To A Mass Shooting Can Leave Unanswered Questions – If They’re Released At All”

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/police-reponse-mass-shooting-reports-questions/

Lomi and Lexi talked about the 2.5 years of work that has gone into their reporting, explaining both their findings and the challenges they faced in their reporting.

They described the collaborative effort, the databases they created, the records requests they filed, and the police interviews and body camera footage they obtained and watched. And they shared the empathy needed to cover a story of this magnitude.

They jointly salute: The entire staff of the Uvalde Leader-News

If you wish to watch the documentary, Inside the Uvalde Response, click here.

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