Newsday earns top Silurian Press Club award for Grumman plume series

Newsday received the top prize — The President’s Choice Award, for The Grumman Plume: Decades of Deceit — as well as five other Medallions and four Merit Awards in the 76th Annual Silurians Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards competition, the organization announced Tuesday.

The Grumman investigation, judges said, "helped to forge a $406 million state plan in which Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Navy agreed for the first time in four decades to end the massive groundwater pollution and remove its sources."

Newsday reporters Paul LaRocco and David M. Schwartz looked into toxic chemicals contaminating groundwater around the Bethpage aerospace giant.

The Silurians Press Club, founded in 1924, comprises more than 300 veteran New York journalists, according to a news release announcing the prizes.

Medallion winners from Newsday in the competition included David Olson and Jeffrey Basinger, who won in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting for "Horror, Hope, Courage: Inside the Red Zone at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital"; and Jim Baumbach, Matt Clark, Paul LaRocco, Sandra Peddie and Schwartz in Editorials, Commentary and Public Service for "Cold Spring Hills.", an investigation of COVID-19 deaths at Long Island's largest nursing home.

The People Profile Medallion Award went to Peddie, Robert Cassidy, Raychel Brightman and Basinger for the Newsday multimedia four-part documentary on John (Sonny) Franzese, the longtime underboss of the Colombo crime family. J. Conrad Williams, Jr., Alejandra Villa Loarca, Thomas A. Ferrara, Steve Pfost and Charles Eckert received the Medallion for Breaking News Photography. Williams Jr. also received a Medallion for Sports Photography.

"It’s a great honor for us at Newsday to be awarded six Medallions and four Merit awards for such range of work by our colleagues, including investigations into nursing homes during the pandemic, a look inside a hospital at the height of COVID-19, photos from the summer of protest in 2020 and a profile of Sonny Franzese," said Deborah Henley, editor of Newsday. "We are particularly proud to have received the President’s Choice award for our investigation into the Grumman Plume."

Newsday’s Merit Award winners were James T. Madore for Business and Financial Reporting; Basinger for Feature News Photography, and Williams Jr. for Sports Photography.

"We are thrilled that the Silurians have honored Newsday photographers with two Medallions," said John Keating, Newsday’s director of multimedia newsgathering. "Our team that won the Breaking News Photography award put in an exceptional effort last year, covering close to 200 protests. J. Conrad Williams Jr. won the Sports Photography award with a creative and artistic approach at the Yankees Spring Training camp. We are proud of all of them."

The winners will be honored at a virtual awards ceremony on June 16.