Winner – GateHouse Media: Failure to deliver
- Contributor – Emily Le Coz, Josh Salman, Lucille Sherman, Tony Elkins, Mara Corbett, Tyson Bird, Jennifer Borresen
- Judges’ Comments – Midwifery and out-of-hospital births are often held up as a solution to high maternal and infant mortality rates in the U.S. In other countries, midwives are fully integrated into the medical system. But as the reporting team from GateHouse Media discovered during their nine-month investigation, here in the U.S., midwifery is also fraught with problems that can, at times, result in unnecessary trauma and deaths. The team used an impressive amount of data — gathered from some 150 requests from agencies in all 50 states — to create an innovative, fully searchable database of 24,000 midwives and 300 birth centers across the country. This is a vital resource for women seeking to make informed choices about where and with whom they deliver their babies. The database was not only innovative, it also provided a public service based on the quarter million views (and climbing) it has received.
