Oklahoma SPJ announced Thursday the OU Daily staff will be the recipient of the organization’s 2022 Carter Bradley First Amendment Award, its highest honor for journalism produced in the state in the past year.
Per a contest organizer, this year may mark the first time the First Amendment Award has been bestowed on a college newsroom in the state.
The Daily’s entry highlighted a concerted effort by its independent student staff, amid the challenges of the pandemic, to reset norms around transparency, accountability and general acceptance of the party line from the powers that be in our city and at OU in the aftermath of a tumultuous string of administrative transitions.
Specifically, the entry focused on three stories published in 2021 across the tenures of editors-in-chief Jordan Miller (spring), Jillian Taylor (summer) and Blake Douglas (fall).
An in-depth analysis of Norman Police Department data, reported by Jana Hayes and published in February, revealed Black people in our city are, according to per capita rates, roughly three times more likely to be contacted, arrested or have force used against them by police than white residents. These calculations place Norman’s Black residents at more risk than Black Americans nationwide, who are twice as likely to be arrested than their white counterparts. Despite local police pushing back on the analysis, the story won national diversity story of the year from both the Associated Collegiate Press and the College Media Association.
A magazine-length feature, reported by Douglas and published in October, examined the university’s failings to fulfill public records requests in a timely fashion, unpacking the original intent of the law according to one of its authors and surfacing possible changes to the law based on other states’ phrasings that could generate greater public transparency in more swift fashion.
And a sports piece, also published in October, in which Daily reporters Mason Young and Austin Curtright observed a portion of an OU football practice — by looking out the window of a public building on campus — coupled with original sourcing to break the news of who was likely to be the Sooners’ next starting quarterback. The story led the athletic department to enact a 72-hour national media blackout and prompted ESPN’s Rece Davis to say on “College GameDay” of the Daily at the end of the week, “They’re not a propaganda arm. They showed some ingenuity. They found out the story that everyone in the state of Oklahoma is talking about… Who says journalism is dead?”
In years past, the First Amendment Award has gone to individual reporters at some of the state’s leading professional newsrooms for complex investigative projects exploring topics such as the spread of COVID-19 in schools, criminal justice reform and health care inequities.
Bradley, who was inducted to the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in 1987, was a longtime journalist, administrator and publicist. Per his Hall of Fame biography, before his death in 2008, he worked for several newspapers in the state before spending 17 years with United Press International. He also worked in Washington, D.C., for an Oklahoma senator as well as in Oklahoma in other roles throughout his distinguished career.
In addition to the First Amendment Award, the Daily and 14 of its staffers or contributors are up for a variety of organizational and individual honors that will be presented at OKSPJ’s awards banquet Oct. 15 in Lawton.
