2006 SBU Alum Wins Prestigious Journalism Award

At summer freshman orientation, more than a month before she ever took a note in a St. Bonaventure classroom, Rachel George was pulled aside by Dr. Denny Wilkins, her adviser.

“The highest award we have in journalism is the Hellinger. I expect you to win it,” Wilkins recalled.

A product of Pioneer Central School’s renowned journalism program, George did just that. The former BV sports editor, Times Herald intern and Associated Press stringer graduated with a 3.8 GPA and was honored with the university’s Hellinger Award in 2006.

Four years later, George has added an even more impressive award to her trophy case. The Wilmington (N.C.) StarNews sports writer took first place in the 2009 Associated Press Sports Editors Writing Contest in the highly competitive Investigative category.

“I’m beyond excited getting the award. But I’m so much prouder of the fact that we didn’t have to write a story about four football players who died because the roof caved in,” George said.

George figured the odds were long that her entry would be honored. Investigative is the only APSE category open to newspapers of all circulations. The StarNews, circulation 40,000, was up against writers from the Boston Globe, YahooSports, USA Today and New York Times.

Phil Kaplan from APSE phoned George at work April Fools’ Day to inform her of the good news. Long past quitting time, she thought about not answering the phone.

“When the finalists were named in early March, I guess I never realized there was a next step,” George said. “Phil said, ‘You’re No. 1,’ and then made some crack about it being like Butler winning the national title. My brain just couldn’t process what he was saying. I was speechless. At one point he said, ‘Are you still there?’”

Remarkably, SBU alum Adrian Wojnarowski, class of ’91, was among a team of four YahooSports reporters who took third place in the same category for their probe into alleged recruiting violations by UConn’s men’s basketball program. Longtime Times Herald sports editor Chuck Pollock, an adjunct instructor in SBU’s journalism school, won first place for columns in the under-40,000 circulation category.

George wrote a series of articles on New Hanover High School’s Jap Davis Field House, which had been shut down in late 2007 because of structural concerns. School officials assured the newspaper that repairs were made before students and coaches started using it again in spring 2008.

A year later George was taken into a restricted area of the building where a beam that supports the roof was sagging significantly. She had a number of safety questions and started her investigation.

The first part of the story was published Aug. 1, 2009, a day after football practice started.

“Clearly, it was a problem that the football players were going to be using an unsafe building,” George wrote in the cover letter submitted to APSE with her entry. “The county inspections department condemned the building before the start of practice because of my reporting. Alternate arrangements were made when the season started, and the players were kept out of danger.”

George said the stories were built through a diligent investigation that ended up being more than 700 pages of documents and e-mail, and 20 hours of interviews.

StarNews sports editor Dan Spears knew from the beginning that George was a special talent.

“Rachel has always been willing to push envelopes,” Spears said. “She did a huge series on Title IX issues that has led to changes in sports programs in North Carolina. She has a persistence about her, a willingness to put herself on the line knowing things need to be fixed.”

John Hanchette, who teaches in SBU’s Jandoli School of Journalism and Mass Communication, knows something about investigative reporting; he won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1980 for his work on a series that unmasked a religious fundraising scandal and resulted in the return of several million dollars in lost invesments to elderly Catholics.

Hanchette saw the potential in George right away.

“Even in JMC 101, Rachel was always concentrating, always questioning, always looking for the hard news angle,” Hanchette said. “Sometimes we mull our consciences over in faculty meetings wondering if we are teaching an empty profession, so to hear news like this, especially when the impact of her reporting is so meaningful, is especially gratifying.”

George said she heeds lessons from her Bonaventure education all the time.

“I hear Hanch and Denny in my head all the time,” she said with a laugh. “I spoke to some UNC-Wilmington students recently and told them three things: learn how to report a story, tell a story, and adapt a story. I learned that from them.”