SPEAK NO EVIL
Read SPEAK NO EVIL here.
A Chattanooga Times Free Press investigation into the cycle of inner-city violence was honored Monday as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, journalism's highest honor.
The Pulitzer committee honored "Speak No Evil" in the local reporting category.
The committee cited reporters Joan Garrett McClane and Todd South, photographer Doug Strickland and multimedia reporter Mary Helen Miller "for using an array of journalistic tools to explore the 'no-snitch' culture that helps perpetuate a cycle of violence in one of the most dangerous cities in the South."
The Pulitzer in local reporting was awarded to the Tampa Bay Times for an investigation into the squalid conditions in housing for the city's homeless population.
Also cited as a finalist was The Record, of Woodland Park, N.J., for exposing how heroin has permeated the suburbs of northern New Jersey.
For Speak No Evil, McClane and South spent nine months interviewing more than 150 people and analyzing nearly 300 shooting cases dating back to 2011. They found that in nearly 60 percent of unsolved shootings cases, witnesses who saw violent acts refused to cooperate with police. They also found that years of mistrust, suspicion and hate have cemented a divide between the police and the inner-city community, making prosecution difficult.
Strickland and Miller also spent months working on the project.