Ghost Factories Report Uncovered Health Hazards Across the Country
USA TODAY, a multi-platform news and information company, has won the 2013 Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award for investigative multimedia reporting. The winning entry was for USA TODAY's Ghost Factories report that uncovered hundreds of forgotten lead factories across the country and the health hazards they left behind. The award was announced today by Columbia Journalism School.
Ghost Factories was an extensive multimedia series that was reported by a team of USA TODAY reporters and editors working with database, design, digital and visual experts. It included an online interactive that gives users detailed findings about more than 230 factory sites, including historical maps documenting the factories in operation and interactive maps allowing anyone to examine more than 1,000 soil samples gathered by USA TODAY in 21 neighborhoods across the country. The first installment in the series ran in April 2012 and all the stories can be seen online at ghostfactories.usatoday.com.
The reporting and editing team was led by reporters Alison Young and Peter Eisler and investigative managing editor, John Hillkirk as well as several dozen database, digital and video journalists.
"We are so proud of the work the USA TODAY investigative team did on the Ghost Factories series and it is an honor to be recognized and receive our first DuPont Award for it. This report was a true team effort between the investigative and database teams along with our digital and video journalists who worked on the story for months. USA TODAY is committed to powerful visual storytelling and this kind of investigative multimedia reporting is a perfect example of that," said Dave Callaway, editor-in-chief of USA TODAY.
