Headline Club announced winners at FOIA Fest 2025 on Saturday, March 22.
The Chicago Headline Club is thrilled to announce that Lisa Schencker and Emily Hoerner of the Chicago Tribune have been awarded first place for both the inaugural A-Mark Prize for Dogged Reporting and the annual Watchdog Award for Public Interest for their in-depth reporting on sexual abuse by medical providers.
Schencker and Hoerner found dozens of instances of doctors, nurses and other medical workers assaulting patients. In some cases, hospitals, state regulators, investigators and health companies took no action against the accused providers and allowed them to keep working with patients.
Judges noted that the reporters had to overcome HIPAA restrictions to obtain records, fight for courtroom access to public proceedings, file FOIA requests for police records and convince victims to share sensitive medical information.
The A-Mark Prize for Dogged Reporting, sponsored by the A-Mark Foundation, honors one or more reporters who overcame significant challenges in order to reach publication, such as FOIA legal battles, reticent public officials or other institutional barriers. First-, second- and third-place winners, and their outlets, will receive a cash prize.
And each year, the Chicago Headline Club’s Watchdog Award presents a cash prize to Chicago-area journalists for enterprising journalism that defends and protects everyday folks. Each award is judged by a panel of top investigative journalists without ties to the Chicago area.
Block Club Chicago’s Mina Bloom, Francia Garcia Hernandez, Ariel Parella-Aureli and Colin Boyle and Reema Amin of Chalkbeat won second place in the A-Mark category for “Lost In Translation: Migrant Kids Struggle In Segregated Chicago Schools.”
Illinois Answers Project’s Madison Hopkins and the Chicago Tribune’s Joe Mahr won third place for “Many cameras. Little focus. Blurry results.”
For the Watchdog Award, judges awarded a tie for second place between the NBC 5/Telemundo project, “Dismissed,” and the Chicago Sun-Times entry, “Heroin’s Invisible Toll.” The Illinois Answers Project was awarded fourth place for “Strapped Down: Restraint Chairs in Illinois Jails.”
Thank you to everyone who submitted their work to these awards, which were announced earlier than typical.
On March 28, the Chicago Headline Club will announce the finalists for the 48th Annual Peter Lisagor Awards.