Thank you for making the CT Journalism and Open Government Awards a success

Jun 24
2 min read

Updated: Jun 25

What a wonderful evening celebrating Connecticut’s journalists, media advocates and public officials.

Hosting the CT Journalism and Open Government Awards as a joint event organized by CT SPJ and CCFOI was a bit of an experiment, and by all accounts it was a success.

Photos by Mary Quinn

More photos below!

We were so happy to bring together people from all around Connecticut who are invested in bringing important and entertaining reporting to CT audiences, protecting the public’s right to information and advocating for strong journalism and journalism careers in Connecticut.

Among the award winners were many students and their journalism professors, professional journalists from news organizations of all sizes around the state and public officials who have been strong advocates of government transparency and the public’s right to know.

CT SPJ inducted Norma Rodriguez-Reyes, the owner and publisher of La Voz Hispana of CT, into the Connecticut Journalism Hall of Fame. Norma was introduced by New Haven Independent founding editor Paul Bass and surrounded by her proud colleagues, friends and family.

CCFOI awarded the Stephen A. Collins Award to Katherine Revello, a reporter for Inside Investigator; the Bice Clemow Award to state Comptroller Sean Scanlon and the Champion of Open Government Awards to state Sen. Heather Somers and state Rep. Roland Lemar.

The CCFOI Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes an individual who has devoted his or her career to government transparency, was presented to Colleen Murphy, who retired recently as executive director and general counsel of the Freedom of Information Commission, where she worked for 35 years.

CT SPJ honored the hundreds of winners of the 2025 Excellence in Journalism professional and student contest, the recipients of the Bob Eddy Scholarship and the winners of the the following three awards:

The First Amendment Award, which honors reporting that increases the public understanding of the role of the press in a free society, went to Ginny Monk and Dave Altimari of the CT Mirror for “On the Hook,” an exposé of the lax standards and predatory practices that allowed the towing industry to victimize people who live paycheck to paycheck.

A group of reporters and editors at Hearst Connecticut Media Group won the contest’s other two major awards — the Stephen A. Collins Public Service Award and Theodore Driscoll Award for Investigative Reporting — for “No Place to Sleep,” a project in which a group of journalists and photographers covered 48 hours of homelessness across the state.

Congratulations to all of the winners and inductees, and thank you so much again to everyone who came.