Opinion

This ongoing series deftly injected human stories into a complicated policy debate on the costs of uninsured residents. The writers also managed to take on Big Tobacco’s PR machine around a cigarette tax increase. The work had great impact, generating public response to the featured families, grassroots organizing and governmental efforts to cover not just uninsured children, but their parents. The writing was tight and crisp.

In a society where newspapers (and the people who write and edit them) are supposedly becoming more irrelevant, this series shows why there is still no substitute for enterprising reporting and pointed, well-written journalism. These powerfully argued editorials pierced the reality of inexcusable conditions inside the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center.

Ramos spent a year reporting and writing editorials that probe Louisiana’s problem-ridden juvenile justice system. He illustrates, by example and also wide-angle reporting, that the state’s policies have been both expensive and ineffective; the prisons are ill-equipped to provide the rehabilitative services these youths so desperately need. His work produced significant reforms in a state where powerful district attorneys and corrections officials had long resisted change.

These columns are everything good advocacy writing should be: well-researched, well-reasoned and above all, well-written. Through varied topics, they remind readers that public policy problems affect actual human beings, often those least in a position to defend themselves.