2024 Michael Kramer Best Public Notice Journalism Awards honor works by Carrie Pitzer and Alyssa Meier

Kate Decker

Sep 18, 2024

Named in 2023 by the Public Notice Resource Center, the Michael Kramer Best Public Notice Journalism Award — part of the NNA Foundation's Better Newspaper Contest — honors the best reporting that uses public notice as a primary source of information.

Carrie Pitzer, owner, The Stanton (Nebraska) Register, and Alyssa Meier, associate publisher, Washburn (North Dakota) Leader-News, were named first place and second place respectively for their dogged pursuit of transparency.

***

When printing the Stanton County Budget request, Pitzer first noticed the county didn’t send the entire document.

Upon notice of the mistake, the clerk refused to provide the information.

“FOI allowed us to not only get the information that taxpayers needed, but it also showed our readers that we are the watchdog of the community,” Pitzer wrote in her entry.

“Response from the community in regard to our actions has been nothing but positive,” she continued. “Without the FOI request, the public would not have realized the county was in the process of passing a budget increase without publishing the change in the newspaper.”

It wasn’t until a FOI request that the county sent the entire document to the newspaper, which we published in its entirety as a public service to our readers. Our publisher also printed an editorial pointing out the lack of transparency. Per the Nebraska Press Association’s attorney, we published an additional letter requesting a public apology to stakeholders be put in the newspaper.

Judges commented, “Excellent efforts to hold local government responsible and communicate what their responsibilities are to the public.”

***

Meier claimed second place for her reporting on election laws that have “no teeth.”

This series of stories, prompted by Wilton Public School's placement of an 'emergent' notice of election, shed light on both a public entity's violation of state Century Code and on North Dakota's systematic flaws in upholding state law.

Representatives of Wilton Public School contacted the Leader-News advertising department requesting an urgent placement of an election notice, which state law mandates be published a minimum of two weeks before the election. The notice was first published six days ahead of the election.

While reporting on this error, the Leader-News discovered that there are no penalties or repercussions for the violation itself. Instead, the lack of notice is only taking into consideration if two things happen:

1. A constituent of the school district disputes the results of the election
2. The constituent proves that the missed public notice impacted the election turnout and/or results

The Leader-News' reporting found that the law in question simply has no teeth unless a member of the public instigates a legal fight to prove to the state that state law does matter.

Judges commented, “The newspaper has done a very good job of informing the public how the school did not fulfill its statutory requirement regarding notice of an election.”

***

The annual public notice reporting award is named in honor of public notice advocate Michael Kramer, a former PNRC Board member and president of Law Bulletin Media in Chicago, who died on Dec. 7, 2020, after a battle with cancer. Kramer spent his life in the news-publishing business and joined the Law Bulletin in 1997, rising to publisher in 2007 and company president in 2015. He was also a valued member of the Illinois Press Foundation Board of Directors for many years.