Vivid, on-the-ground portraits of real people illustrate the plight of families driven into bankruptcy and other economic hardships with razor sharp clarity. The project gains power from the use of narrative techniques, including scenes and dialogue, to illustrate the struggle of declining wages, rising health care costs, soaring tuition and shrinking retirement funds. An extraordinary undertaking and an innovative approach to making a complicated story into one that brims with insight and humanity.

This heartbreaking story endears 14-year-old Acia Johnson to strangers who have never met her. Acia and her sister lived a life of neglect in a troubled home, ultimately dying in a house fire. Once emotionally connected, readers are primed to grasp the shortcomings of the state’s system for protecting its children – usually from the children’s own family. Letters to the editor and an investigation of Acia’s case by the state’s new Child Advocate show the impact of this moving story. The piece brings home the tragedy not only of Acia’s life, but also those of countless children like her.

“Mental illness is an insidious form of identity theft, erasing one future and replacing it with another,” writes Smith in this powerful tale that brings home the nightmare of families who try to navigate one state’s broken mental health care system. The writing is original, compelling and clear. The story deftly moves from a wrenching narrative of a mother grieving for her tormented son, to a news peg of a recent shooting spree, to explanatory reporting on overtaxed state resources.

A brilliantly structured presentation on the challenges facing a region and its aging population. By documenting the stories of caregivers, patients and families, the multimedia project is a great balance of narrative and user utility – not an easy thing to achieve. The incorporation of numerous social networking sites demonstrates a creative use of the medium to tell an important story.

Carmichael’s article on Max Blake, a 10-year-old boy with bipolar disorder, is moving and vivid. She didn’t blink or look away from the difficulties faced by Max and his parents: the strain on their marriage, their struggles to love him, the limitations of his future and the degree to which he pushes the limits of what a child can expect from his parents. Carmichael clearly spent the kind of time with Max and his family that enables a reporter to write with insight and close-to-the-ground detail.

This is the epitome of public service journalism. The Long Island Press made a commitment to educating its community about a growing heroin epidemic among young people. The team simultaneously reveals a hidden scourge and a disturbing truth about the community at large. The series exposes wrongdoing and deception by school administrators, who stonewalled the reporters and put their schools’ reputations above student health. Readers see the problem from all angles – through the eyes of kids, parents, schools and cops. The story did what the best stories do: It galvanized an entire community to take action.

These first person stories personalize the foster care system and the challenges facing the children within. Each reporter is a teen who has been, as they say, ‘in the system.’ The writing, narration and production are emblematic of superb radio journalism. To give voice to these teen reporters is to give voice to the thousands of other kids who find themselves in that very same system: aging out, finding a home, or finding a place in the world.

This is an example of local television at its best, helping real people who do not deserve terrible treatment and cannot advocate for themselves. Sade Lopez, a 15-year-old boy, was trapped in a nursing home for the elderly and mentally ill – simply because he was deaf. Because the state of Missouri would not allow Weidinger to interview Lopez as a minor, she literally waited three years for him to grow up. The power of her work and her tenacity is admirable.

Compelling stories and fluid story-telling drive this sharp documentary on the lack of affordable health care. The issue affects so many in this country and has been told so often, but Public Policy Productions reports these harrowing tales in an extraordinarily intimate way. The program offered comprehensive follow-up materials through community engagements and lesson plans; the availability of online materials and tie-ins to the 2008 presidential campaign; and a mash-up map that enables viewers to locate health services for the uninsured in their area.