Newsday wins 106 Society of Professional Journalists awards

Newsday's The Grumman Plume: Decades of Deceit, an investigation of toxic chemicals contaminating groundwater around the Bethpage aerospace giant, was honored with the heralded Robert W. Greene Public Service Award by the Press Club of Long Island.

The paper won 106 awards in the annual contest, hosted by the Long Island chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, including 46 first-place finishes in the digital, narrative, video and visual categories.

The contest honors the best daily and weekly print journalism, online media, TV, radio and photojournalism along with college and high school journalism and broadcasts on Long Island.

The Grumman investigation, led by reporters Paul LaRocco and David Schwartz and multimedia producer Jeffrey Basinger, also won first place in the categories of investigative video and digital reporting and second place for investigative and environmental reporting. Also cited for their work on the project were Newsday's James Stewart, Matt Cassella, Heather Doyle and Joe Diglio.

Among Newsday's first-place honors were reporting awards for coverage of the coronavirus, environment, business, entertainment, food and beverage, history, neighborhood/community, arts, headline, magazine, profile, lifestyle feature, real estate, science and technology, sports and travel.

The paper also won digital honors for the best use of interactive presentation, newsletters, best use of social media by an individual (Daysi Calavia Robertson), best use of social media by an organization, multimedia database, race and diversity and social media video.

In the video category, Newsday won top honors for breaking news, coronavirus, crime and justice reporting, entertainment, health, food and beverage, in-depth reporting/series, race and diversity and sports.

And in the visual category, Newsday took first place for still imagery, photojournalist video, business, cartoon, environment, feature photograph, infographic, news photograph, nonlocal photograph, photo essay or gallery, profile and sports photo.

The Press Club canceled its in-person awards ceremony for the second consecutive year due to the pandemic.

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.