Photo by Brandon Quester, inewsource
Photo by Brandon Quester, inewsource

inewsource collected 13 awards this week from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists as part of its annual contest, including seven first-place plaques.

Leonardo Castañeda received the most first-place awards — four. He earned top honors in two categories for his examination of the opioid epidemic in San Diego County. He used data and first-hand experiences of people on the front lines of the addiction to report the story, “How opioid devastation caught San Diego County communities unaware.

Leo wrote this story as part of the California Health Journalism Fellowship, a program of the Center for Health Journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. The story took first-place honors for daily health reporting and for audio news or feature.

He also earned two first-place awards for “Portable classrooms, despite heat and noise, find permanent home in San Diego County.” One was for daily education reporting; the other for audio investigative/enterprise story.

Here’s a list of inewsource’s other awards:

Brad Racino:

Megan Wood:

Brad and Megan also received a second place in the daily investigative/enterprise reporting — single subject category for “In the shadow of Seaport.”

Cheryl Clark:

Roxana Popescu, an inewsource freelance reporter:

Chris Young and Joe Yerardi, former inewsource reporters,

For a complete list of the SPJ contest winners, click here.

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