The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) recognized two FRONTLINE projects with 2022 Salute to Excellence Awards on Friday, August 5.

Announced during the NABJ’s annual conference and career fair gala — held this year in Las Vegas, Nevada — the Salute to Excellence Awards are noted for honoring journalism and communications that best cover the Black experience or address issues affecting the worldwide Black community.

Un(re)solved, FRONTLINE’s 2021 multi-platform project, was honored at the gala with a Digital Media NABJ Award in the “Interactive: Feature” category. In the award-winning web interactive and augmented-reality installation, audiences enter a forest of quilted memories to learn about four people whose untimely deaths were re-examined as part of a federal effort to grapple with America’s legacy of racist killings through the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. From there, audiences can explore all of the more than 150 names associated with the Till Act, collected in an accessible public forum for the first time: voting rights advocates, veterans, the first Black female prosecutor in Louisville, Kentucky, business owners, mothers, fathers and children. 

To create the AR installation and digital interactive components of Un(re)solved, FRONTLINE partnered with Ado Ato Pictures, a premier mixed-reality studio founded by artist, filmmaker and technologist Tamara Shogaolu. The project was executive produced by award-winning filmmakers Dawn Porter (John Lewis: Good Trouble; Gideon’s Army) and Raney Aronson-Rath (executive producer and editor-in-chief, FRONTLINE). Earlier this year, Un(re)solved was also honored with a Scripps Howard Award and a News & Documentary Emmy Nomination.

“We are proud to have collaborated with Tamara and her Ado Ato Pictures team to bring Un(re)solved to life and to memorialize the victims of racial violence featured throughout the project,” says Aronson-Rath. “We’re thrilled to see Un(re)solved be recognized by the National Association of Black Journalists and are grateful to our partners at StoryCorps, Black Public Media, Northeastern University’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, along with PBS and GBH, CPB who championed this experimental storytelling.”

Additionally, “Poisoned,” an investigative series from the Tampa Bay Times in collaboration with FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative, won a Newsroom Staff 101-200 NABJ Award in the “Investigative” category. From Times reporters Corey G. Johnson, Rebecca Woolington and Eli Murray, the series, which also won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award, revealed what happened to hundreds of Gopher Resource lead smelting plant workers in Tampa, Florida, who were exposed to dangerous levels of lead. 

“We are also delighted to see the stunning and urgent reporting from our local journalism partners at the Tampa Bay Times be saluted by the NABJ,” adds Aronson-Rath. “We share this great news with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whose generous support for FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative enables us to aid in the creation of high-impact local journalism in communities around the country.”

You can watch the NABJ’s Salute to Excellence Gala on YouTube to learn more about Un(re)solved, “Poisoned,” and this year’s other NABJ Award winners. Explore the award-winning storytelling in Un(re)solved and “Poisoned” now. 

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FRONTLINE Press Contact: Anne Husted | Manager, PR & Communications, FRONTLINE | frontlinemedia@wgbh.org | 617.300.5312