Series on lack of law enforcement throughout rural Alaska wins 2020 Al Nakkula Award

BOULDER (CO)
University of Colorado

April 16, 2020

What happens when communities lack law enforcement?

For many of us, this may seem like a theoretical question. But through reporting based on hundreds of public records requests and interviews, Anchorage Daily News Special Projects Editor Kyle Hopkins found that one in three Alaskan communities have no law enforcement of any kind.

(Loren Holmes / Anchorage Daily News)Hopkins’ three-part investigative series “Lawless”––produced in a partnership between the Daily News and ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network––is the winner of this year’s Al Nakkula Award for police reporting, co-sponsored by the Denver Press Club and the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Media, Communication and Information.

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In addition, the judges give special mention to a collaboration with Marquette University’s Public Service Journalism O’Brien Fellowship and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that produced the series, “Unsolved: The Devil You Know.” Through both a podcast and written series, Journal Sentinel Criminal Justice Reporter Gina Barton investigated the cold case of Father Alfred Kunz, who was murdered in a rural Wisconsin town in 1998.

“Like the ProPublica assistance, such partnerships, similar to the one that produced last year’s Nakkula winner, help illustrate how outside groups with a desire to help local journalists play an increasingly important role in doing important work for local communities during these challenging times for local newsrooms,” Plunkett says.

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