T-Squared: The Texas Tribune has won its first National Magazine Award

Support award-winning journalism with a donation today. Donations from readers like you make it possible for our newsroom to pursue investigative projects across the state.

---

Tonight, The Texas Tribune was honored for the first time with a National Magazine Award, in one of the largest and most competitive categories: reporting. We shared the award with our partners ProPublica and FRONTLINE.

The award honors Lomi Kriel and Lexi Churchill of the Tribune-ProPublica investigative unit and Jinitzail Hernández, formerly of the Tribune, for “Someone Tell Me What to Do,” an investigation published on Dec. 5. The investigation established that across the country, states require more training to prepare students and teachers for mass shootings than for those expected to protect them. The investigation was conducted in collaboration with FRONTLINE, the PBS documentary series, which co-produced a film, “Inside the Uvalde Response,” with the Tribune and ProPublica.

Following the 1999 Columbine shooting, law enforcement agencies across the country began retooling protocols to prevent long delays like the one that kept officers there from stopping the two shooters. Key among the changes was an effort to ensure that all officers had enough training to engage a shooter without having to wait for more specialized teams.

More than two decades later, law enforcement’s chaotic response in Uvalde and officers’ subsequent explanations of their inaction showed that the promise of adequate training to respond to a mass shooting has yet to be fully realized.

Officers failed to set up a clear command structure. They spread incorrect information that caused them to treat the shooter as a barricaded suspect and not an active threat even as children and teachers called 911 pleading for help. And no single officer engaged the shooter despite training that says they should do so as quickly as possible if anyone is hurt. It took 77 minutes to breach the classroom and take down the shooter.

Long after most television crews left Uvalde, the Tribune and ProPublica stayed on, visiting Uvalde regularly and building trust with survivors and grieving families. Our journalists obtained a vital trove of investigative materials, including interviews with almost 150 officers who responded, as well as hours of body-camera footage and 911 calls, and used them to produce a comprehensive account of what happened on May 24, 2022.

After the investigation was published, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland unveiled the long-awaited findings of a federal probe into the response. He pointed to missteps that led to delays in confronting the shooter. Then he turned to what he said was the biggest failure, one that required the most urgent action to avoid another colossal breakdown such as the one that cost lives that day: a need to better train officers for the likelihood that they will have to engage a mass shooter.

The 59th National Magazine Awards were presented in New York City by the American Society of Magazine Editors, which was founded in 1963 and sponsors the awards, in association with the Columbia Journalism School.

While it is gratifying to win an award, this was one of the most emotionally difficult stories any of us had ever covered. We are grateful to the survivors and relatives of victims in Uvalde, who entrusted us with their stories. We hope that our work might better inform and prepare law enforcement agencies that have the difficult task of training officers to react to mass shootings.

---

We can’t wait to welcome you to downtown Austin Sept. 5-7 for the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival! Join us at Texas’ breakout politics and policy event as we dig into the 2024 elections, state and national politics, the state of democracy, and so much more. When tickets go on sale this spring, Tribune members will save big. Donate to join or renew today.