Behavioral health, spaceport series win investigative reporting awards

Juan Gabriel Torres’ ex-girlfriend and their children left balloons and a cupcake near a cross on the Lohman Avenue bridge in Las Cruces for his birthday last year. NMPolitics.net, the Las Cruces Sun-News and KRWG told Torres’ story as part of their investigative report on behavioral health in Southern New Mexico.

NMPolitics.net has won seven awards in the 2018 New Mexico Press Women contest, including investigative reporting awards for examinations of behavioral health in Southern New Mexico and Spaceport America’s future.

The series “Distressed,” in which NMPolitics.net, the Las Cruces Sun-News and KRWG examined Southern New Mexico’s struggling behavioral health system and explored solutions, won first place in the competition’s investigative reporting category. That series, which published in November, has already twice won national awards in competitions among newspapers in the USA Today Network, which includes the Sun-News.

And NMPolitics.net’s series about Spaceport America’s impact on New Mexico’s economy and future — which published in August — won second place in the investigative reporting category.

Because it won first-place in the state competition, the behavioral health series will be entered in the National Federation of Press Women’s investigative reporting competition. NMPolitics.net won that national award in 2016 for shining light on a possible conflict of interest current Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller had when he was a state senator.

“NMPolitics.net has long focused on deep investigative reporting that New Mexico sorely needs,” said Heath Haussamen, the news organization’s editor and publisher. “We’ve been working recently to build collaborations with other news organizations to expand our collective capacity to investigate critical topics. It’s an honor to be recognized for our work.”

New Mexico Press Women informed NMPolitics.net about the awards in its 2018 communications contest — which were for work done in 2017 — on Sunday. The awards will be formally presented at NMPW’s annual conference in Santa Fe on April 28.

NMPolitics.net also won awards for commentary writing, news reporting and photography. Here’s a rundown:

Second place, news columns

Haussamen placed second in the news columns category for two commentaries he wrote in 2017. One column reflected on the life of former U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici following his death in September. While Domenici was “one of the most influential and respected politicians in this state’s history,” Haussamen wrote that he would also remember him “as the kid who bought butterscotch sundaes from my Gramps, a boy who worked hard in his father’s grocery business, a man whose story is wonderfully New Mexican and American and human.”

A second commentary called out the Albuquerque Journal’s editorial board for its role in spreading a Martinez Administration falsehood about a freeze of Medicaid funds to behavioral health organizations in 2013. That funding freeze threw the state’s behavioral health system into chaos and affected tens of thousands of the most vulnerable New Mexicans. “A news organization that is called to be prophetic instead aided and abetted a tragedy,” Haussamen wrote.

Second place, news story

Haussamen placed second in the news story category for an article he wrote in August about the chairman of the Doña Ana County Republican Party, Roman Jimenez, blasting “violent, leftist protesters” a day after a violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The article sparked widespread, bipartisan condemnation of Jimenez’s actions and led to his resignation from the GOP leadership post.

Second place, photographer-writer

Haussamen worked as reporter, photographer and videographer when a group of protesters confronted U.S. Border Patrol agents at their Las Cruces headquarters in May and blocked access to the facility. For his article, photo gallery and videos on that day’s events, Haussamen won second place in the photographer/writer category.

Third place, feature story

For an October article digging into the economy in downtown Truth or Consequences and the impact of a new brewery, Haussamen won third place in the feature story category. The article was part of a collaboration with other New Mexico newsrooms, with support from the Solutions Journalism Network and High Country news, that examined the challenge of building resilient rural communities.