The California News Publishers Association (CNPA) released their lists of finalists for this year today, and I’m in the running for an award for “Story Presentation, Page Layout & Design” in the digital small newsrooms category.

The piece that earned me this consideration is Lost Days: Poverty, isolation drive students away from school in California’s rural districts, part of EdSource’s Rural California: An Education Divide series, published last May. The piece was a pleasure to art direct, with great photography by Julie Leopo and reporting from David Washburn (both in the running for CNPA awards in other categories).

It’s very gratifying to be recognized, whoever wins; there’s stiff competition from the other finalists, who include teams at CalMatters and the Long Beach Post. EdSource is also in the running for several other categories, including Coverage of Youth and Education for their report on how California’s housing crisis is impacting teachers, which I also had a hand in presenting.

I’m thankful to EdSource for the opportunity to work on this project and to have a lot of space to design, layout and photo choices to do the best I could at building a narrative that supported the already strong work by others and facilitate the delivery of a powerful story about people living in the state’s margins.