“Faith Betrayed,” a Honolulu Civil Beat story about Guam’s reckoning with the torturous legacy of decades of sexual abuse by local priests, has been awarded the Sally Jacobsen International Perspective Award from the Associated Press Media Editors.

Judges said the work of reporter Anita Hofschneider and photographer Cory Lum was notable because “the ability to get so many people to open up was remarkable; the straightforward writing was critical to telling a story so unsettling.”

Their work won first place in the category for news organizations with less than 50 newsroom employees.

Civil Beat

John Hill, Civil Beat’s investigations editor, won honorable mention in APME’s Public Service award for small news organizations for his series, “Waiting In Pain,” about Hawaii’s workers’ comp system.

“The series combined deep and detailed investigative work with compelling personal stories that drove home how these rules sometimes play out in real life, and the inequities in a workers’ comp system that is dysfunctional and arguably manipulated,” according to the judges.

Civil Beat also won two awards in the 2018 Best of the West contest.

Jessica Terrell, podcast/multi-media director, and April Estrellon, won second place for podcasts for an installment of the series “Offshore – The Sacred Mountain.”

Civil Beat’s editorial board won second place in editorial writing for “Sanctuary State: Hawaii Must Stand Up For Its Values.”

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