Las Vegas Review-Journal wins 3 awards for Oct. 1 photo essay
The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s art department and photographer Benjamin Hager won three awards in the Best of News Design Creative Competition for a project on Route 91 Harvest festival survivors’ tattoos.
The Society for News Design’s contest bestowed Awards of Excellence on the department and Hager in three categories: one-day photo series, single-page news design and overall storytelling.
The project, “Indelible Memories,” was part of the Review-Journal’s first-anniversary coverage of the Oct. 1, 2017, mass shooting that killed 58 concertgoers and injured hundreds more.
Some survivors got tattoos to memorialize the night and the “Vegas Strong” sentiment that developed in the aftermath.
“Given many options, we chose to lead our Oct. 1 anniversary section with a photo essay rather than a traditional narrative, and I’m glad that we did,” said Nathan Estep, the Review-Journal’s assistant managing editor of visuals. “Ben’s portraits told compelling stories of Las Vegans who had chosen to memorialize the massacre with a tattoo. And the design department did a great job of keeping it simple so as not to overpower Ben’s work.”
The competition concluded Wednesday after three days of judging more than 4,800 entries in St. Petersburg, Florida.
The Society for News Design, founded in 1979, is an international nonprofit with roughly 1,500 members, including professional journalists and visual communicators.
Contact Shea Johnson at sjohnson@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272. Follow @Shea_LVRJ on Twitter.