The Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service placed first in the “Best Solutions Project of the Year” category of the 2020 LION Awards, a national journalism contest.
Sponsored by the Local Independent Online News (LION) publishers group, the awards were judged by 30 judges from across the industry who evaluated 169 entries from LION members.
The award recognizes NNS for its reporting on the closing of the Lincoln Hill and Copper Lake youth prisons and the implications for Milwaukee. Allison Dikanovic, former NNS reporter and Marquette alumna, received a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network to travel to New York City to report the three-part series.
Judges called the project “A truly exceptional example of solutions journalism, taking a pressing local problem and displaying how other communities have solved it. While it remains to be seen whether or not Wisconsin takes on the model, this work leaves decision-makers few excuses on how to build a better model.”
