{
  "id": "2004-july-august-winners",
  "slug": "2004-july-august-winners",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2004-july-august-winners.html",
  "year": 2004,
  "month": "July-August",
  "monthNum": 7,
  "headline": "Winners",
  "kicker": "IRE AWARDS",
  "author_name": "Andrea Lorenz",
  "author_title": "Contributing Editor",
  "affiliation": "IRE and NICAR",
  "summary": "Three award-winning investigative journalism projects are highlighted, including investigations into lead contamination in Detroit, oyster farm compensation in Louisiana, and government handling of Hepatitis C virus cases. The articles showcase how reporters used data analysis tools and databases to uncover government negligence and questionable spending.",
  "keywords": [
    "investigation",
    "data",
    "contamination"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Data & Databases",
    "Health & Environment"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "Access",
    "Excel",
    "FoxPro",
    "GIS"
  ],
  "full_text": "Winners\n\nThe article won second place in the Associated Press Sports Editors investigative reporting category. (See Story No. 20338)\n\n\"Damaged Lives: Lead's Toxic Toll,\" Detroit Free Press, Emilia Askari, Tina Lam, Megan Christensen, Marsha Low, Hugh McDiarmid, Jr., Dan Shine, Shawn Windsor and Wendy Wendland-Bowyer\n\nA team of reporters investigated the contamination from lead smelters and leaded gasoline. They found government agencies neglecting to clean up lead in neighborhoods and test children for lead poisoning.\n\nThey used Access to analyze a Michigan Department of Community Health database for children tested for lead poisoning and mapping software to show the results of their soil tests. (See Story No. 20369)\n\n\"Shell Game,\" The Times-Picayune, Aaron Kuriloff and Jeffrey Meitrodt.\n\nThis series investigated $2 billion in court judgments against the state in favor of oyster farmers. The reporters found the awards to be either unjustified or excessive. Using tax and harvest records of oyster farms, court documents and sales data, they built tables in Excel to show results of a project initiated by the state to rebuild the coast. They found oyster beds were doing better - although oyster farmers claimed they were destroyed - than before the project.\n\nThe series won the Louisiana Press Association investigative award, and the Associated Press/Louisiana-Mississippi story of the year. (See Story No. 20608)\n\n\"Silent Alarm,\" The Kansas City Star, Karen Dillon and Mike McGraw\n\nThis series provided an in-depth look at the government's handling of the Hepatitis C virus. They used Microsoft Visual FoxPro and Excel to work with some of the data. Spreadsheets containing information about people alive today with the virus contracted through blood transfusions showed the estimated mortality of these patients. Other spreadsheets showed the number of Hepatitis C cases since the 1980s that could have been prevented by the government with a test. They also created a database of medical journal articles about the virus. \"Silent Alarm\" won first place in the Kansas Press Association award for investigative reporting. (See Story No. 20921)",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
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  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2004-july-august-winners.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2004-july-august-winners.json"
}