Texas Tribune, ProPublica and FRONTLINE share Online Journalism Award and national Edward R. Murrow Award

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The Texas Tribune, ProPublica and FRONTLINE have won two national awards for their coverage of the fallout from the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

Three newsrooms received the Online Journalism Award for Explanatory Reporting (Large Newsrooms) for “Unprepared,” a 2023 story package about law enforcement’s flawed response to the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, and the national Edward R. Murrow Award for “Inside the Uvalde Response,” a 54-minute FRONTLINE documentary that aired Dec. 5.

Juanita Ceballos, a FRONTLINE Investigative Journalism Initiative filmmaker, wrote and directed “Inside the Uvalde Response” with FRONTLINE producer and editor Michelle Mizner and co-producer and senior editor Lauren Prestileo. The series features reporting from Lomi Kriel, Lexi Churchill, Perla Trevizo and Jessica Priest of the ProPublica-Tribune investigative unit and Jinitzail Hernández and Zach Despart of the Tribune.

Following our joint investigation, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland released the findings of the federal investigation into the response. Garland pointed to the missteps that led to delays in confronting the shooter. He then turned to what he called the greatest failure, requiring the most urgent action to avoid another colossal failure like the one that cost lives that day: the failure to provide adequate training for active shooters.

“Our children deserve better than growing up in a country where an 18-year-old has easy access to a gun that belongs on the battlefield, not in the classroom,” Garland said. “And communities across the country and the law enforcement officers who protect them deserve better than being forced to respond to one horrific shooting after another. But that is the awful reality that we face. And that is the reality that every law enforcement agency in every community across the country needs to be prepared for.”

Garland’s comments and call for immediate prioritization of active shooter training nationwide were the first public acknowledgment by a government official that some children and teachers would have survived if law enforcement had responded quickly. They also confirmed our findings of a staggering lack of such training nationwide.

The three newsrooms have received several other honors for our work in Uvalde. Earlier this year, we jointly received a National Magazine Award, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting, and won the Collier Prize for State Government Accountability for this coverage. Our reporting relied on confidential investigative materials we obtained, but we also joined other news organizations in lawsuits to push for official release of the documents. Earlier this month, the city of Uvalde released a trove of documents—the first government entity to do so—but the Texas Department of Public Safety, Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, and the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office continue to oppose our ongoing demand for the documents.

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