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2h ago

Texas Newsrooms Win Top Honors for Joint Hill Country Flood Coverage

Peer-judged prizes highlight the power of collaborative reporting that drives accountability.

Wreckage from the July 4, 2025, Hill Country flood is piled high at a soccer field in Kerrville. At least 139 people died in the disaster.
Volunteers secure a 10-foot wooden cross erected as a memorial to those who died at Camp Mystic, visible in the background, during the July 4, 2025, Hill Country flood. Twenty-five girls, two counselors and the camp's co-owner were killed.
Cary Clack, a columnist and editorial board member for the San Antonio Express-News, won first place in editorial writing in the annual Texas Managing Editors' Excellence in Journalism contest.
Jason Buch, an independent journalist based in Austin, reports on the border and immigration for the San Antonio Express-News. He was the principal reporter and writer on an investigative project that documented questionable spending under Operation Lone Star, Gov. Greg Abbott's border security initiative.  

Overview

  • The San Antonio Express-News, Austin American-Statesman and Houston Chronicle won the Star Breaking News Report of the Year and shared the deadline writing prize for their coordinated coverage of the July 4, 2025 Hill Country floods at the Texas Managing Editors conference in El Paso.
  • Reporters were first to confirm deaths and missing children at Camp Mystic, where floodwaters on the Guadalupe River killed 25 girls, two counselors and a co-owner in one of the nation’s deadliest flood disasters.
  • Judges cited detailed, multimedia work that used images, voices and data to humanize victims rather than reduce them to numbers.
  • The Express-News and Houston Chronicle were also honored for an Operation Lone Star investigation that examined $177 million in state grants and found spending on routine local costs and items unrelated to border security, including leather office furniture and premium 4x4 pickups.
  • The Austin American-Statesman earned nearly two dozen awards across categories, including first-place honors for comment and criticism, a sports feature, business reporting on data centers, and staff photojournalism.