Civil Beat Named Hawaii's Best News Website

Dan Zelikman/Civil Beat

The Society of Professional Journalists Hawaii Chapter on Friday named Civil Beat the state's top news website.

Civil Beat also won the first place award for public service, SPJ's most prestigious honor, for its series "Roads to Riches," which exposed overtime abuse in the city's Road Maintenance Division.

Civil Beat won five first place awards and was recognized as a finalist eight times in the SPJ's 2010 Excellence in Journalism Awards. (SPJ names one first place winner and up to two finalists, without rank, in each category. A complete list of winners is available here.)

The awards were for work in 2010, the year Civil Beat got its start. The website was in operation for only eight months in the contest period.

In awarding the best news website honor, the judges said the site had a "vastly superior layout, more entry points and good content." The judges were journalists from Oregon.

The public service entry was reported by Nanea Kalani and Sara Lin. Among the series' findings was that five workers made more in overtime than regular pay, logging more than 1,200 hours in a single year each. It also exposed possible double-billing for work allegedly done at the same time by the same people, and that workers who illegally dumped rubble in a stream were paid questionable overtime for the job.

"The was watchdog journalism at its finest," the judges wrote. "The heart of a good public service entry is taxpayer money and the 'Roads to Riches' series was just that."

Civil Beat also won first place awards for government reporting, news photography and feature photography.

Michael Levine won the top honor for government reporting for his five-part series examining the differences between a state analysis of the cost of Honolulu's proposed rail system and the city's price estimate. The final article carried the headline: "Civil Beat Conclusion: Rail Report 'Shoddy,' 'Biased' — and Right?.

"This series illuminated the problems a railway would bring to Hawaii," the judge wrote. "After reading this, I'm convinced that the Civil Beat did more legwork to answer the tough questions of funding and logistics than the people in charge of putting a railway in."

Katherine Poythress won first place for news photography for her photo of reaction to Gov. Linda Lingle's decision to veto a bill that would have legalized civil unions. The judge said it was "a good capture of an emotional moment."

Civil Beat contributor John Hook, who worked with the website on a number of major stories in 2010, was recognized with the first place award for feature photography for his shot of a woman celebrating Neil Abercrombie's victory in the governor's race. "This picture tells a story of victory better than any I've judged this spring," the judge wrote.

Civil Beat's finalists were:

• Chad Blair, Column Writing or Blog/Features or Sports, for Hawaii Dive-O: A Revisionist View of the Beloved Cop Show.
• Staff, Breaking News Reporting, for its coverage of the November general election.
• Staff, Breaking News Reporting, for its coverage of Lingle's veto of the civil unions bill.
• Civil Beat Editorial Board, Editorials, for its editorial, Internet Press Vulnerable After WikiLeaks.
• Katherine Poythress, Photo Essay, for Photos of a Day of Drama.
• Nanea Kalani and Sara Lin, Investigative Reporting, for Roads to Riches.
• Michael Levine, Public Service, for Honolulu Rail Report: 'Shoddy,' 'Biased' — and Right?.
• John Temple, Column Writing or Blog/News, for Three Deputies Give New Meaning to the Term Shield Law.

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