“The Price of Plenty,” a collaboration between the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications (UFCJC) and the University of Missouri School of Journalism, is a finalist for the 2024 Online News Association (ONA) David Teeuwen Student Journalism Award. The award honors a student package or project that expertly uses digital storytelling and technologies regarding a specific story or topic to inform its audience.

Funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative, “The Price of Plenty” was comprised of a team of 18 student journalists from both universities reporting on fertilizer and its consequences from the ground up. The students spent five months reporting from Florida’s “Bone Valley,” where 8-million-pound earth movers strip-mine phosphate; agrichemical plants along the Mississippi River; farm fields and legislative hallways; communities stuck next door to the industry; and from the Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone.” UFCJC Environmental Journalist-in-Residence and Senior Lecturer Cynthia Barnett and Missouri School of Journalism Associate Professor Sara Shipley Hiles designed the course for journalism students to report on the cycle of fertilizer and its consequences.

In 2023, UFCJC’s “WATERSHED” received the ONA Student Journalism Award in the Portfolio Student Team category. The project was the result of a six-month investigation of Florida’s water quality to mark the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act and the Florida Water Resources Act.

The 2024 awards will be presented at the ONA awards ceremony on Sept. 20 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Posted: August 12, 2024
Category: Alumni News, College News, Student News
Tagged as: Cynthia Barnett, Online Journalism Awards, Online News Association, The Price of Plenty