SPJ Green Eyeshade awards named for biz reporting

The Society of Professional Journalists named its Green Eyeshade Awards on Wednesday, and there were three winners in the business reporting category.

The winners are:

First Place: Bill Estep, John Stamper and Linda Blackford, Lexington Herald-Leader, “Win, Lose or Draw”

Second Place: Kris Hundley, St. Petersburg Times, “Capitalist China”

Third Place: Bush Bernard, Richard Lawson and Kevin Walters, The Tennessean, “Nissan”

See all of the winners here.

The Win, Lose or Draw series from the Lexington paper takes a look at how 25 years of expensive state efforts to recruit industries have barely moved the needle on the commonwealth’s dismal rankings — neither have they improved the lives of many people teetering on the edge of poverty. Instead, at a cost of $1.8 billion, Kentucky’s main economic-incentive programs have overburdened taxpayers and left citizens on the losing side of a high-stakes game with hard-bargaining corporate interests.

This occasional series of stories looking at how Kentucky’s incentive programs and what they have done to attract lasting jobs to the state can be found here.

Stamper has been a reporter for the Herald-Leader since 2000, when he graduated from Western Kentucky University. He writes about growth and development issues for the paper. Estep, also a WKU graduate, has been writing about rural Kentucky and state government for the Herald-Leader since 1985. He is the newspaper’s projects reporter. Blackford is a reporter.