Review-Journal honored for coverage of Las Vegas Strip shooting

The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s exhaustive breaking news coverage of the Route 91 Harvest festival shooting was honored on Monday with a national excellence in journalism award.

“In our city’s darkest hours, the staff of the Review-Journal produced some of the finest work in the history of the newspaper,” Executive Editor Glenn Cook said Monday. “Every person on our staff contributed to our coverage of the Oct. 1 shooting in some way.”

The Sigma Delta Chi award for deadline reporting specifically recognized the newspaper’s first three days of coverage following the shooting, which left 58 concertgoers dead and hundreds more injured.

“This was far more personal for us than it was for any of the other journalists from around the world who came to Las Vegas to cover the story,” Cook said. “This is our home. We all know people who attended the concert, who responded to the shooting, who cared for the dying and injured. And we were able to push through those feelings to tell important, compelling stories.”

The Society of Professional Journalists designated its Sigma Delta Chi awards by daily newspaper circulation size. Of the three different circulation ranges, the Review-Journal won the mid-level category for deadline reporting.

The largest circulation category for breaking news was awarded to The San Francisco Chronicle for its coverage of the Northern California wildfires. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat won the smaller circulation category for its coverage of the same tragedy.

Last year, winners of the same deadline reporting award included The San Francisco Chronicle for its coverage of the deadly Ghost Ship fire in Oakland and the San Antonio Express-News for its coverage of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, the latter of which included work from current Review-Journal Washington correspondent Gary Martin.

“It was an incredibly intense time for our staff, who worked what seemed like 24-hour days for days on end to deliver the deepest, most comprehensive coverage of the shooting,” Review-Journal Publisher and Editor Keith Moyer said Monday. “It was the biggest story and the best work of my more than four decades in journalism. Thanks to the Society of Professional Journalists and the Sigma Delta Chi judges for honoring our efforts.”

Contact Rachel Crosby at rcrosby@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-8301. Follow @rachelacrosby on Twitter.