The Chicago Headline Club announced Friday that ProPublica won six Peter Lisagor Awards, recognizing the best journalism produced across the Chicago region. ProPublica projects won for best feature story, best illustration, best education reporting, best individual blog post, online best non-deadline reporting and online best feature story.
“Inside the Lives of Immigrant Teens Working Dangerous Night Shifts in Suburban Factories” by Melissa Sanchez won best feature story, as well as online best feature story or series. The piece revealed that immigrant teenagers as young as 13 or 14, who attend school by day, are routinely working in illegal and often dangerous jobs on factory assembly lines at night. Sanchez unveiled a world operating in plain sight in one Chicago suburb and in places like it around the country. The story prompted the high school the teenagers attended to convene meetings to discuss how to better support its students, and a number of residents in the area donat