The Palo Alto Weekly’s ongoing coverage of the Palo Alto school district’s handling of bullying received the 2013 Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service Journalism, the Society for Professional Journalists announced today.

The award, which will be presented at a June 20 dinner at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., honors the work of Weekly writers Terri Lobdell and Chris Kenrick and Editor Jocelyn Dong throughout 2013.

The Weekly was one of 85 winners at newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations and online news sites across the country from nearly 1,800 entries, according to the Society’s announcement of the awards.

The Sigma Delta Chi Awards date back to 1932 and each year recognize exceptional professional journalism as judged by a panel of prominent veteran journalists. The Weekly’s award is in the non-daily newspaper category.

The Weekly coverage included two cover story packages researched and written by Lobdell, “Out of the Shadows,” (June 14, 2013) about bullying, and “Power to Hurt,” (Aug. 16, 2013) on the use of social media by teens, and numerous news stories by Kenrick and Lobdell on the school district’s handling of bullying complaints, federal investigations and the development of bullying policies.

The award also recognizes the Weekly’s pursuit and use of public records as part of its reporting process.

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8 Comments

  1. Congratulations to the marvelous Terri Lobdell and the Weekly on this well deserved honor. I hope this helps to cause those officials critical of your coverage to reconsider their perspective.

  2. They did do a good job, but you have to admit that Kevin Skelly, Charles Young, Barb Mitchell, and the rest of the board made it amazingly easy. Still are

  3. In the name of the Disabled Child who was bullied. Congratulations and thanks for your articles. I know I can trust what you said because you always make sure you have evidence to prove what you are saying. Not too many reporters do this. So far you are number 1 newspaper. You really deserve the award. Job Well Done as always.

  7. Y in the name of all students who have been bullied and have found no help. I want to thank Palo Alto weekly for their continuos support on bulling and special education issues. You and OCR were the only ones there for this child. Special thanks to terry for her kind and calm attitude and for taking the time to speak to the victims of bullying and their families. One of you should run for
    Oarsd member. Congratulations. When is time to go see god you will get real award. No one should have to wait so long to get help when getting bullied.

  8. Anonymous,

    Yes, it is a sad moment not for the PAUSD, but for our community. PAUSD they knew they were failing our kids, and did nothing to stop it. They ignore the problems, and here we are now. At lease Palo Alto Weekly did not close their eyes to reality and they were there for those kids who were bullied, or sexually/disability harassed. Palo Alto was on their side of Justice and tried to protected and help our kids and listened to the parents of those students too. I wish Skelly would have waken up before the bullying issues become a chaos so PAUSD would have not touched ground as it did. It is going to take a lot of work and change of personnel to get back on our feet as we were before Skelly and his allies joined us. I think he still think that they did not fail the kids. There is some thing wrong when we do not recognized our mistakes, because we can never learn from them. This is exactly what has happened here. All PAUSD learned is that they need to lawyer up to get out of the mess. However PAUSD can’t get better at protecting our kids when they do not accept that they failed them. Congrats to our great reporters! PAUSD kids are lucky you are there for them at every board meeting and whenever there is a need for improvement. I could say you are their angels.

    Yses sad times, but hope will be back to our district at the end of June.

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