Madison365 earned six 2021 Milwaukee Press Club Awards, including for reporting, social media and overall excellence for online news publication, at the MPC’s annual Gridiron Dinner Friday.
MPC named three finalists in each category in March, with final placement of gold, silver and bronze awards announced at the event Friday.
Madison365 earned Gold awards honors in the following categories:
- Best Hard News Feature for Kynala Phillips’ coverage of maternal health disparities in Northeast Wisconsin
- Best Investigative Story or Series for Robert Chappell’s exposé on Dane County Deputies breaking a man’s hip and neglecting him for 15 hours
Madison365 also won silver awards in the following categories:
- Best Local News or Feature Website
- Best Column for Henry Sanders’ opinion piece on the rapid increase in people of color taking positions of power in Madison
- Best Use of Social Media to Tell or Enhance a Story for Henry Sanders’ virtual town hall event with Wisconsin’s Black police chiefs
- Best Sports Story for Robert Chappell’s feature on the effort to rename a Milwaukee high school stadium after soccer legend Jimmy Banks
“I’m tremendously proud of our team,” said Sanders, the CEO of 365 Media Foundation and publisher of Madison365. “We work every day to amplify the voices of Wisconsin’s communities of color, and it’s gratifying to have that work recognized among Wisconsin’s best journalists. I’m grateful to our team for putting in the work and I’m grateful to our donors for supporting that work.”
Phillips wrote her story while a graduate student at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York, on an internship funded by the NEW News Lab. She is now a service journalism reporter at the Kansas City Star.
Chappell is executive editor of 365 Media, and host of the Madison365 Daily Update and cohost of the It’s Only 10 Minutes daily news podcast.
Madison365 has been recognized locally and nationally, earning a 2021 award for Excellence in Revenue and 2019 awards for Best Breaking News and Publication of the Year from the national organization LION Publishers.
This year’s MPC contest drew more than 800 entries from throughout Wisconsin in professional and collegiate categories. The competition was judged by professional journalists from press clubs throughout the U.S., including statewide clubs in Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Western Pennsylvania and Southeast Texas and metro-area clubs in Cleveland, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Orange County, San Diego, San Francisco and Syracuse.
Representing journalists and news outlets since 1885, MPC is the oldest continually operating press club in North America.
