Extraordinary journalism from the 30 newsrooms that make McClatchy

McClatchy
3 min readMar 4, 2020

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Urgency. Accountability. Impact. McClatchy newsrooms delivered strong journalism this month that met our mission of essential local journalism that serves our communities.

Visual journalists in Raleigh and Charlotte spread out across NC on an expansive project to uncover what issues are truly important to voters in this swing state.

Journey Across the 100: What issues do NC voters value ahead of the 2020 election? We went to all 100 counties to find out.

By a team of visual journalists from The News & Observer, The Charlotte Observer and McClatchy

Reporters in Boise, Raleigh and Belleville built on public records requests and research to tell of problems costing their communities in safety, tax dollars and fairness. Lexington scored a public-records win, securing the release of thousands of pages of documents hidden by a major institution.

Idaho highway contractors changed records hundreds of times. Then, they got bonuses

Story By Audrey Dutton
Video and Photo By Darin Oswald
Idaho Statesman

9 pages or 15,000? After 4-year legal battle, UK turns over clinic records to Herald-Leader.

Lexington Herald-Leader Editorial Board

Four years and four courts later, the Herald-Leader prevailed against the University of Kentucky in an open records case that found 15,000 pages relevant to the question of why UK paid $4 million back to the federal government because of a cardiology clinic it acquired.

Kansas City went all in on the storybook path of the Chiefs and their fans to the team’s eventual Super Bowl victory, while staff from Miami, the Real-Time team and Sacramento added reporting, visuals and joint editing to create our first ever single sports team effort.

A Chiefs party 50 years coming: ‘Like a fantasy, and it all came true.’

Story By Sam Mellinger
Complete coverage By Sports, News and Video staff
The Kansas City Star

A Miami reporter spotted an Instagram video of the president at his Super Bowl party and turned it into a viral sensation. The Opinion team there followed with a strong editorial.

As others stand at attention for anthem, Trump fidgets, points, pretend-conducts the band

Story By Sarah Blaskey
Miami Herald

And in South Carolina, the editorial board did the hard work of meeting with the Democratic candidates in the presidential primary to deliver an endorsement that captured attention locally and nationwide. The State is the only McClatchy paper making a presidential primary endorsement. As a company, we decided not to do endorsements unless we actually interviewed the candidates. Roger Brown in Columbia went above and beyond to get in-person interviews with nine Democratic presidential candidates. Only Bernie said no.

Editorials

The State endorses Pete Buttigieg in the South Carolina Democratic Party primary

The State Editorial Board

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