Searchlight New Mexico Awards
2024
Alicia Inez Guzmán has won the MOLLY Award, for Buried Secrets, Poisoned Bodies. The award is named for the late, legendary reporter, Molly Ivins, and presented annually to a single reporter by The Texas Observer for “the best in American journalism.”
Best of the West, 1st place, feature photography, to Michael Benanav, for “An Apache ceremony for the ages” a rare, behind-the-scenes portrait of a Mescalero Apache coming-of-age ceremony.
Top of the Rockies, 1st place, feature photography, for “An Apache ceremony for the ages” by Michael Benanav.
2023
Institute for Nonprofit News, “Breaking Barriers Award,” for “Nowhere to Go” by Ed Williams, in partnership with ProPublica. The series revealed how New Mexico is placing its most vulnerable foster teens in homeless shelters.
Online News Association “Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award,” finalist, for “Nowhere to Go” by Ed Williams, in partnership with ProPublica. The series revealed how New Mexico is placing its most vulnerable foster teens in homeless shelters.
Top of the Rockies Excellence in Journalism Awards, 1st place, beat reporting, to Joshua Bowling, for his work covering criminal justice, incarceration and policing.
Top of the Rockies Excellence in Journalism Awards, 1st place, environment feature, to Michael Benanav, for “Seven years after a spill turns a river yellow, Navajo farmers still seek justice.” The story detailed the EPA’s failure to compensate Diné farmers for an environmental disaster that contaminated a major river.
Courageous Innovation Award, a Santa Fe Community Foundation Piñon Award, given to Searchlight New Mexico for its journalism work since launching in 2018.
Best of the West, 1st place, explanatory reporting, for “Fire and Rain,” by Alicia Inez Guzmán, Michael Benanav and Lindsey Fendt. The series examined how poor forest management collided with a warming climate to produce the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history.
2022
First Amendment Award, News Leaders Association, for “Secrecy and Sacred Cows: Turmoil at CYFD,” by Ed Williams. The series exposed how New Mexico’s Children, Youth and Families Department used a secretive messaging app and deleted its communications, equivalent to shredding public records. The head of CYFD and his second-in-command stepped down in the wake of the stories.
Top of the Rockies, 1st place, public service, for “Eviction Epidemic,” by Ed Williams, Dillon Bergin, Ike Swetlitz, Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi, Don J. Usner, Annabella Farmer, Lam Thuy Vo and Joe Rull. The series revealed how New Mexico landlords wrongfully evicted people during the pandemic, violating government mandates.
Top of the Rockies, 1st place, education feature, to Alicia Inez Guzmán, for “You’ve reached 17,494 students. Please leave a message.” The story revealed how New Mexico paid millions to an out-of-state education company for questionable “student engagement” services in public schools.
Top of the Rockies, 1st place, health feature, to Ike Swetlitz, for “A Lucrative Vein,” an investigative story about Modern Vascular, a chain of outpatient clinics accused of pushing unnecessary treatments that caused suffering and patient harm.
Top of the Rockies, 1st place, enterprise reporting, to Ed Williams, for “Secrecy and Sacred Cows.”
Best of the West, 1st place, headline writing, to Amy Linn, for “You’ve reached 17,494 students. Please leave a message.”
Top of The Rockies, 2nd place, to: Ed Williams, for public service; Don J. Usner, for feature photography; Kevin Beaty, for illustration; Sunnie R. Chahchischiligi, for education feature; Lindsay Fendt, for climate reporting; and Sunnie R. Chahchischiligi, Jourdan Bennett-Begaye and Christine Trudeau, for health feature.
2021
Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi Award, to Alicia Inez Guzmán, for “The Day the War on Drugs Came to Chimayó,” a feature about an unjust drug raid that devastated families for decades. The national award is given annually “in recognition of distinguished service to the American people and the profession of journalism.”
William S. Dixon First Amendment Freedom Award, to Ed Williams, for “Secrecy and Sacred Cows.” The award from the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government honors people whose work advances government transparency.
Best of the West, 1st place, investigative reporting, to Ed Williams, Wufei Yu and Don J. Usner, for “Chaos and cannabis: How human trafficking, child labor and black-market marijuana took root on the Navajo Nation.”
2020
Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi Award, 1st place in featuring reporting, to Searchlight staff for “Hitting Home,” documenting the pandemic’s indelible impact on five New Mexico towns.
2019
The News Leaders Association’s Frank Blethen Award for Local Accountability Reporting, to Ed Williams, for “A Pattern of Failures,” an investigation that exposed severe abuses within the treatment foster care system.
2018
New Mexico Press Association, 1st place, investigative reporting, to Ed Williams, for “A Pattern of Failures.”