Pulitzer Center Update

Howard Center Wins EPPY Award for Pulitzer Center-Supported Project

A homeless encampment near a canal in El Centro, Calif., as seen on July 24, 2020. As support services have dwindled amid the COVID-19 pandemic, some homeless people in Imperial County have resorted to bathing in irrigation canals. Homelessness looks different in different parts of the U.S., especially in rural agricultural regions such as Imperial County. Image by Anna Maria Barry-Jester/KHN. United States, 2020.

A homeless encampment near a canal in El Centro, Calif., as seen on July 24, 2020. As support services have dwindled amid the COVID-19 pandemic, some homeless people in Imperial County have resorted to bathing in irrigation canals. Homelessness looks different in different parts of the U.S., especially in rural agricultural regions such as Imperial County. Image by Anna Maria Barry-Jester/KHN. United States, 2020.

The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University won a 2020 EPPY Award for COVID's Invisible Victims in the category “Best News Story on a College Website.” 

For the COVID's Invisible Victims project, student reporters tracked local government responses to the pandemic and the public health implications of those actions—or lack of action—on homeless populations. The reporting team interviewed dozens of professionals working in the fields of homelessness, epidemiology, and public health and filed over 100 public records requests to investigate the government’s response to the crisis. Their reporting focused on homeless essential workers, on the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on Black and Latinx populations, and on whether government funds allocated to help people experiencing homelessness actually reached them.

The EPPY Awards, founded by Editor & Publisher magazine in 1996, is a premier competition for media-affiliated websites. There were over 450 entries to the 2020 competition.

A full list of the 2020 awardees can be found here.