Daily Herald drug series wins award
Editor's note: This story originally ran on Sept. 30, 2002 as part of the Daily Herald's "Hidden Scourge: Heroin in the Suburbs" series.
The Daily Herald won a prestigious Sarah Brown Boyden award for public service Sunday from the Chicago Press Veterans Association.
A team of journalists won in the public service category for a four-part study of the growing suburban heroin and club drug problem in a series titled "The Hidden Scourge."
The Daily Herald shared the award with the Chicago Tribune, which was recognized for a series on coerced confessions.
Daily Herald Projects Editor Madeleine Doubek, photojournalist M. Scott Mahaskey and reporters Sara Burnett, Alicia Fabbre and Erin Holmes detailed the drug abuse that claimed at least 13 young lives last year, and they explored answers to a problem few wanted to address publicly. The series was unique because it detailed the personal turmoil of several suburban drug addicts, using those accounts to help in the search for solutions.
The newspaper is continuing the occasional series this year, writing about every young drug death reporters uncover in an ongoing attempt to prevent others from succumbing to drug addiction.
The press veterans' group awards were established through an endowment by the family of Sarah Brown Boyden, one of the first female journalists at the former Chicago Daily News in the mid-1930s.