Power & Secrecy: N&O investigative series wins national journalism award
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Power & Secrecy series wins national Scripps Howard journalism award
- Judges were asked to reward journalism that “demonstrated dedication and perseverance."
- Reporting revealed impacts from NC legislators consolidating power and expanding secrecy.
The News & Observer has won a prestigious national journalism award for its Power & Secrecy investigation.
The Scripps Howard Fund announced this week that judges selected the series as its Distinguished Service to the First Amendment winner out a national field of entries.
This award honors journalists for combating government secrecy and for “instilling in the public an appreciation of its need as well as its right to know as guaranteed by the First Amendment.” Judges were asked to look specifically for journalism that demonstrated dedication and perseverance.
Power & Secrecy, published over months, has exposed the hidden impacts of moves by the Republican leadership of the North Carolina General Assembly to consolidate power and to increase secrecy.
One primary technique has been using the state budget to make significant policy changes, including on state environmental regulation, and to make grants benefiting political allies, sometimes with nearly no opportunity for debate.
N&O investigative reporter Dan Kane led the project, collaborating with N&O data journalist David Raynor, former N&O environmental reporter Adam Wagner, Kansas City Star graphics artist Neil Nakahodo, and former McClatchy Media creative director Sohail Al-Jamea.
Their reporting in 2024 and 2025 revealed many things, including how:
- Legislative leaders tucked $100 million into the final version of the 2023 state budget for a transportation slush fund — ten times the amount in previous budgets. The state House speaker earmarked nearly half the money to a project in a newly formed Congressional district just hours before he announced his candidacy for that seat
- Legislators approved $50 million in grants with unusual conditions that ultimately were awarded to two new businesses co-led by a former legislative aide. Both companies ran into trouble, especially a dredging firm that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers temporarily shut down after discovering it dug in the wrong spots.
- Nearly $10 million was given to a company producing an educational video game that lawmakers continued funding even after few students used it. One of the company’s investors is the wife of the chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court, a powerful Republican who helped protect legislative leaders’ gerrymandered Congressional districts.
- While legislative leaders for months did not disclose their efforts to win lawmaker support legalizing casinos in North Carolina, a Baltimore-based casino developer made cloaked moves to acquire land options and local politicians’ support to build in three counties. Sen. President Phil Berger, then but no longer a casino advocate, revealed to the N&O that it was a lobbyist with the Cordish Companies, the Maryland developer, who first approached him promoting the economic promise of allowing casinos.
Earlier this year, the Power & Secrecy series won a Sunshine Award from the N.C. Open Government Coalition, and it was a semi-finalist for the national Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting.
In addition to sharing a $10,000 cash award, Scripps Howard Journalism Award winners receive funding to visit universities to present their winning work to journalism students. McClatchy Media journalists who produced Power & Secrecy will meet with students at the University of Southern Mississippi.
All journalism published as part of the Power & Secrecy project can be found here.
This story was originally published June 13, 2025 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Power & Secrecy: N&O investigative series wins national journalism award."
