News & Observer reporter Virginia Bridges has been praised for her strong reporting on the criminal justice system in the Triangle and across North Carolina.
Bridges won first place in the Green Eyeshade Award for Courts and Legal Reporting. The annual award recognizes outstanding journalism produced across multiple beats in print, broadcast and digital newsrooms in 11 states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.
Like many newsrooms, The News & Observer is taking a new approach to law enforcement reporting, focusing less on crimes and arrests and more on the inner workings of the criminal justice system.
Bridges, who leads this initiative, takes an accountable journalism approach to reporting on the various facets of that powerful system.
“Virginia’s tenacity and integrity are hallmarks of her exceptional reporting. Her work serves the public’s interests and exemplifies The N&O’s mantra of impactful journalism,” said Editor-in-Chief Bill Church.
Among the journalistic achievements honored with the 2023 Green Eyeshade Award was Bridges’ exclusive reporting on how North Carolina is placing hundreds of youth in solitary confinement, conditions similar to those of people in solitary confinement, not because of their behavior, but because of staffing shortages.
The problems faced by families of imprisoned men after paying thousands of dollars to a Durham lawyer but not receiving the help they expected were also part of her research.
Bridges describes how police in a small North Carolina town raided a woman’s home for dubious reasons and how residents of a Durham public housing complex lost community-based police patrols without warning.
She also documented the plight of police departments under a state law that prohibits them from destroying guns, forcing them to stockpile tens of thousands of weapons that police no longer want on the streets.
In his solutions-focused reporting, Bridges took readers inside a new clinic in Wake County aimed at helping people in North Carolina’s most populous county file civil lawsuits in state court, even if they can’t afford an attorney.
Bridges’ role is funded by the nonprofit The Just Trust, a grant-making initiative that supports criminal justice reform projects across the country.
The N&O is completely editorially independent of all philanthropic organisations involved in its editorial work.
