Sarasota paper wins National Headliner Award for top biz story

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s series on the problems with Florida’s property and casualty insurance industry received the top award in the business news coverage category of the National Headliner Awards announced Monday.

The series, “Florida’s Insurance Nightmare,” was written by Paige St. John. It received the Scripps Howard Foundation award for top business coverage earlier this year. St. John talked about the series with Talking Biz News earlier this month.

Despite no hurricanes in five years, Florida insurers are demanding yet more money from homeowners. At the same time, the capital that insurers have on hand to pay claims has shrunk. The Herald-Tribune spent more than a year examining the Florida insurance market in an attempt to find out why.

Second place in the business news category was “How Wall Street Duped Main Street” by Martin Z. Braun and William Selway of Bloomberg News. An entry from Bloomberg News won this award last year.

Third place was “The Fault Lines Under the Crust” by Jenn Abelson of The Boston Globe, a series of stories about problems at a Boston-based pizza chain hiring immigrants.

See all of the winners here.