2020 Daily Newspaper Awards

This year’s recipient is dedicated to telling the stories of everyday South Carolinians. As a public safety and breaking news reporter, he has built a career on the most noble of journalism ideals: giving a voice to the less privileged. A review of his work from 2020 finds stories that brush aside official pronouncements and detail people’s pain, turmoil and angst.
2020 was a tsunami of illness, death, protest and racism. With each crisis, this reporter told the story of people on the front lines. He also wrote stories about renters in danger of eviction because they lost their jobs during the pandemic and workers at a local chicken processing plant who were protesting for safer work conditions and higher pay. He covered protests after the death of George Floyd.
A signature effort was Losing Brooks, a 5-part series Travis Bland wrote with Isabelle Cueto about the death of a 21-month-old boy. The gut-wrenching project took 13 months to produce, with reporters reviewing more than 500 pages of documents, conducting more than 15 hours of interviews, filing FOI requests, and pushing key sources to talk. The reporting showed that a state law prevents Brooks’ parents from learning details about the child’s death and the criminal investigation. The law says those records can’t be released, even to the parents and even if the case has been closed.
The depth and range made this an especially strong entry. Bland did good work during difficult times. He took on stories that really mattered… seemingly routine stories… but handled them in a way that made them special. An impressive body of compelling work.