ARCHCITY DEFENDERS HAS WORKED HARD since its founding in 2009 to cultivate relationships with St. Louis-area journalists.
Media advocacy is now a core part of ArchCity’s work. The organization’s most recent annual report boasts that “in the past year, [ArchCity] placed 151 stories locally in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the St. Louis American, St. Louis Public Radio and Riverfront Times.”
The report says ArchCity also “placed 25 stories nationally” in publications including The New York Times, The Appeal and The Guardian.
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One tool ArchCity has used to call attention to its areas of focus is its Excellence in Poverty Journalism Awards. It began awarding them in 2017 “to recognize and honor in-depth reporting on race, class, and poverty, and to inspire more coverage on topics impacting families throughout the St. Louis region.”
Among the award winners in 2019 was Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger (his second time as a winner), who has written extensively about the injustices of court systems in St. Louis and elsewhere. Messenger won a Pulitzer Prize in 2019 for his columns on how poor rural Missourians were being unjustly jailed.
Other winners of the 2019 awards included journalists from St. Louis Public Radio and the Riverfront Times.
There is no cash prize associated with the honors, which ArchCity skipped in 2020 during the COVID pandemic.
Major news organizations follow their own ethics codes regarding awards from advocacy organizations like ArchCity. Awards from nonprofits can “present complex ethical challenges for journalists,” says a 2017 post on the topic in Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists.
At National Public Radio, the ethics handbook offers this guidance: “We often receive honors we have not solicited. Of course, laurels are always welcome. But when an award – unsolicited or otherwise – comes with cash or other rewards attached, consult Ethics before accepting.”
The New York Times is stricter. It prohibits its journalists from accepting awards from “individuals or groups who have a direct interest in the tenor of Times coverage.”
A sample letter declining an unsolicited award in the Times ethics handbook reads in part: “The New York Times bars its reporters and editors from accepting awards conferred by groups that have an interest in the subjects covered by the award recipients. The paper does not want to risk the perception that it will cover a subject more thoroughly or skew its coverage of controversial subjects because interested parties have applauded its efforts.”
McPherson contacted three news organizations in St. Louis about their own policies.
Post-Dispatch Editor Gilbert Bailon said: “St. Louis Post-Dispatch editors review whether to accept awards from organizations. Awards have no bearing on our coverage.”
Shula Neuman, executive editor at St. Louis Public Radio, said: “The awards from ArchCity are not something we solicit or enter to win. Our winning their award has no influence on what we decide to cover in general, but if our coverage happens to meet their approval, then it’s fine for them to say so and we appreciate the praise. There is also no cash prize or other reward that comes with their recognition, so this doesn’t cross our ethics around accepting this award.”
STLPR is an NPR member station, but it is not part of NPR. It is operated by the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Riverfront Times Editor in Chief Doyle Murphy, who received one of ArchCity’s awards in 2019, did not respond to an e-mail from McPherson. –McP–
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