Congrats

This is a belated congrats, but a well-deserved one. Several FOGs are on this year’s list of winners for the Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism. The award recognizes the best reporting on children, youth and families. They’re in-depth looks at some well-hidden parts of our communities and families. Read them.

In God’s Name, Tampa Bay Times By Alexandra Zayas, Kathleen Flynn and Chris Davis (ed.)

They shaved him bald that first morning in 2008, put him in an orange jumpsuit and made him exercise past dark. Through the night, as he slept on the floor, they forced him awake for more. The sun had not yet risen over the Christian military home when Samson Lehman collapsed for the sixth time. Still, he said, they made him run. The screaming, the endless exercise, it was all in the name of God, a necessary step at the Gateway Christian Military Academy on the path to righteousness. So when Samson vomited, they threw him a rag. When his urine turned red, they said that was normal. By Day 3, the 15-year-old was on the verge of death, his dehydrated organs shutting down. Slumped against a wall, cold and immobile, Lehman recalls men who recited Scripture calling him a wimp. And he thought: Maybe, if I die here, someone will shut this place down. Not in Florida.

I boy, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel By Mark Johnson and Greg Borowski (ed.) Don’t you want to be a pretty girl, the mother would ask. The child would not say, I want to run like a boy, or throw like a boy, or climb trees like a boy. Just: “I boy.” One day last fall, two years after that first sentence, Jennifer made a decision. She took Isabella to Cost Cutters. We need a short haircut, the mother said. I mean razor short. Like a boy. She began dressing the child in boy’s clothes. Isabella became Izzy.

Transgender at Five, The Washington Post By Petula Dvorak and Lynda Robinson (ed.) Kathryn wanted pants. And short hair. Then trucks and swords. Her parents, Jean and Stephen, were fine with their toddler’s embrace of all things boy. They’ve both been school teachers and coaches in Maryland and are pretty immune to the quirky stuff that kids do. But it kept getting more intense, all this boyishness from their younger daughter. She began to argue vehemently — as only a tantrum-prone toddler can — that she was not a girl. “I am a boy,” the child insisted, at just 2 years old.

The awards recognize newspaper projects/series, single articles, photography, audio, multimedia and short- and long-form video projects. See them all.