The Maine Monitor’s journalism was recognized this weekend at the New England Newspaper and Press Association’s annual spring convention.
An investigation into residential care facilities by Maine Monitor senior public health reporter Rose Lundy was honored Saturday with a first place award in the health reporting category during NENPA’s annual Better Newspaper Competition.
Journalists from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and Rhode Island vie for awards in the NENPA contest. The Monitor competed alongside digital newsrooms such as CT Mirror, VTDigger, MassLive and Granite State News Collaborative.
A joint investigation by The Maine Monitor and ProPublica found that Maine’s health department rarely imposes fines or issues conditional licenses against the state’s roughly 190 largest residential care facilities, which provide less medical care than nursing homes but offer more homelike assisted living alternatives for older Mainers.
From 2020 to 2022, the health department issued “statements of deficiencies” against these facilities for 59 resident rights violations and about 650 additional violations — ranging from medication and record-keeping errors to unsanitary conditions and missed mandatory trainings.
Despite these violations, however, it imposed a fine only once: a $265 penalty against a facility for failing to comply with background check rules for hiring employees. And it issued four conditional licenses: three in response to administrative or technical violations and one in response to a variety of issues, including a violation of a resident’s privacy rights.
The investigation also found that from 2020 to 2022, residents wandered away from Maine residential care facilities at least 115 times, according to state inspection records and a database of incidents reported to the health department.
Maine’s top advocate for residents in nursing homes and assisted living facilities expressed surprise at the newsrooms’ findings.
Read the complete investigation.
MCPIR founders inducted
The convention also celebrated the history of the organization that publishes The Maine Monitor, The Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting. In a Friday evening ceremony, Naomi Schalit and John Christie, the two co-founders of the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, were inducted into NENPA’s hall of fame.
More than 100 people have been inducted into the hall of fame in the past 25 years. The honor recognizes outstanding newspaper professionals in the six-state region and celebrates the contributions they made to the industry.
Schalit and Christie were chosen as part of this year’s class in recognition of their exceptional contributions to Maine journalism, according to an announcement from the association. Schalit and Christie were also inducted into the Maine Press Association Hall of Fame last year.
Also inducted into the hall of fame this year were Stephen Kurkjian of The Boston Globe and Paul Pronovost of the Cape Cod Times. Kurkjian is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who helped expose corruption in Somerville City Hall, political dealings in the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and the clergy abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Pronovost retired as executive editor and general manager of the Cape Cod Times in 2019.
