The American Society of Magazine Editors announced Tuesday that “Someone Tell Me What to Do,” a partnership with The Texas Tribune and a written companion to a documentary with PBS FRONTLINE, won the 2024 National Magazine Award for Reporting.
After independently obtaining a trove of investigative records, Lomi Kriel and Lexi Churchill from the ProPublica/Texas Tribune investigative unit and Jinitzail Hernández, formerly of The Texas Tribune, spent months going through hundreds of hours of interviews and video footage, as well as other documents related to the May 2022 gun massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Reporters also conducted two 50-state analyses of the training requirements for schoolchildren and law enforcement officers. The result was an exhaustive investigation that revealed, in excruciating detail, the devastating distinction between the children who followed their training, even as their peers and teachers cried out in agony from their injuries, and the officers who did not, at times saying that the students’ silence made them believe that the classrooms were empty. Through deep reporting and evocative writing, reporters captured the heart-rending and confounding moments on either side of the door and showed that Uvalde was a reflection of what can happen in states that require more training to prepare students and teachers for mass shootings than they do for those expected to protect them. The project was conducted in collaboration with the documentary series PBS FRONTLINE, which co-produced a film, “Inside the Uvalde Response,” directed by Juanita Ceballos.
