AL.com journalists earn national awards from Society of Professional Journalists
AL.com reporters Sarah Whites-Koditschek, left, and Amy Yurkanin shared in the Society for Professional Journalists’ 2024 Sigma Delta Chi Awards for Excellence in Professional Journalism.AL.com file photos
Reporting on state regulations around hemp products and on a dubious police technique for evaluating whether drivers are stoned earned AL.com a share in national journalistic honors.
The Society of Professional Journalists has announced winners of its 2024 Sigma Delta Chi Awards for Excellence in Professional Journalism. Among the honorees were two projects from teams including AL.com reporters.
In the category of non-deadline reporting for online-only publication, the winner was a story headlined “Police say they can tell if you are too high to drive. Critics call it ‘utter nonsense.’” The entry was a collaboration between Sarah Whites-Koditschek of AL.com and Gus Burns of MLive.com.
The story addresses a national police technique using so-called Drug Recognition Experts to rule on whether drivers are high, and on what drugs, without involving a medical professional or any actual drug screening tests. The practice has been rejected by courts in many states and one expert cited in the story referred to it as “not science-based at all, but … merely a police officer’s lay opinion encrusted with some of the trappings but little or none of the substance of science.”
READ: Police say they can tell if you are too high to drive. Critics call it ‘utter nonsense’
In the category of consumer and retail reporting, the winner was “Highly Legal,” by Amy Yurkanin, formerly of AL.com, Ashley Okwuosa of The Examination, and John Diedrich and Jordyn Noennig of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The story said that in many states where recreational marijuana isn’t allowed, the demand has been filled by an experiment with hemp-derived products and “a massive market of store-bought gummies and vapes … lining gas stations and smoke shop shelves with seemingly legal highs.” But it found that customers, regulators, lawmakers and public health experts were “struggling to keep up with this new class of products.”
Delta-8, delta-9 and THC-A products have flooded into U.S. states that don’t allow the legal sale of marijuana. An AL.com reporter shared in Society of Professional Journalists honors for a story on the uncertainties around such products.Tamika Moore/AL.com
The SPJ described the work as “the kind of story that gets the attention of regulators and legislators pushing for change.”
READ: It’s almost weed. And it’s taking Alabama by storm: ‘A big human guinea pig experiment.’
The full list of award winners can be found at www.spj.org.