Kathleen Megan/ CT Mirror
On the beat: Chris Peak (center) covering the Dalio education partnership.
Christopher Peak won 10 statewide awards from the Society for the Professional Journalists for stories published in the Independent.
SPJ’s Connecticut chapter Thursday announced the winners of its 2020 Excellence in Journalism awards contest. Read about all the winners here.
SPJ also awarded Christine Stuart of CT News Junkie its coveted Stephen A. Collins Public Service Award for coverage that led to the first release of school-level immunization data.
Peak — who left the Independent in March for a new job with American Public Media— shared a first-place breaking news award with the Independent’s Thomas Breen and the Valley Independent Sentinel’s Eugene Driscoll for a series of stories on an immigrant evading ICE agents after a courthouse standoff.
Following are eight other first-place awards he won (all in the hyperlocal category):
• Continuing coverage: Beat coverage of New Haven’s school superintendent.
• Courts/Crime: Illegally secret cop drug policy released.
• Diversity Coverage: Untold black & Latinx History surfaces.
• Education: Two segregated schools, two reactions.
• Feature Story: Students aim for 2‑language seal.
• Government: Suburbs profit off New Haven’s magnets.
• In-depth: City weighs school change 3.0.
• Investigative: Video captures principal shoving student.
Peak also won a third-place local reporting award for a story about how New Haven’s magnet lottery is rigged for suburbanites.