{"id":298814,"date":"2026-05-04T06:41:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T06:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/298814\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T06:41:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T06:41:13","slug":"the-fresno-bee-wins-4-gruner-awards-for-public-service-commentary-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/298814\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fresno Bee wins 4 Gruner awards for public service, commentary & photography"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Fresno Bee took home top prizes in four categories at the 38th Gruner journalism awards on Thursday, an annual competition and ceremony at Fresno State honoring the best journalism in the Central Valley.<\/p>\n

For the second straight year, The Bee won the top prize in the Public Service category, this time for stories about the unfolding immigration crackdown last year, with several investigative pieces focused on the potentially illegal and chaotic opening of a privately owned detention facility in Kern County.<\/p>\n

The team of four Bee reporters included Erik Galicia, Melissa Montalvo, Maria G. Ortiz-Briones and Marina Pena. Montalvo won the Public Service award last year for her 2024 stories about worker deaths at facilities<\/a> owned by Sanger-based Pitman Family Farms, maker of Mary\u2019s Chicken brand poultry.<\/p>\n

Judge Jim Newton, a UCLA instructor and former Los Angeles Times editor, called the immigration topic \u201cthe year\u2019s most important and timely issue\u201d and praised The Bee\u2019s coverage as deeply and deftly reported, according to a news release from Fresno State about the awards.<\/p>\n

The Fresno Bee has published more than a hundred stories about the immigration crackdown and its toll on families and Central Valley life. We chose to highlight these seven below for the contest judges to consider:<\/p>\n

Other Fresno Bee winners<\/p>\n

Best commentary, large dailies: Juan Esparza Loera, recently retired Fresno Bee Opinion Editor, won first place for his column about the deafening silence from California leaders as the U.S. Border Patrol conducted a sweep looking for undocumented immigrants in January 2025, just days before President Trump took office. His critical piece provided an unsettling preview of what was to come.<\/p>\n

FULL STORY: California leaders are inexcusably silent as Border Patrol sweeps Central Valley | Opinion<\/a><\/p>\n

Best news photo, large dailies: Craig Kohlruss, a Fresno Bee photographer, won first place for a breathtaking shot of new citizens being sworn in against the backdrop of Yosemite\u2019s soaring Half Dome. A judge wrote, \u201cBeautiful use of the environment to tell the story of what the ceremony was about. It\u2019s often challenging to get a dynamic photo from a ceremony, but this image certainly did,\u201d according to the press release. Kohlruss also won last year in this category.<\/p>\n

\"Citizen<\/p>\n

Citizen candidates raise their hands to take the Oath of Allegiance with Half Dome as a backdrop during a naturalization ceremony held at Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park to commemorate Constitution Day and Citizenship Day on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025.<\/p>\n

(CRAIG KOHLRUSS\/ckohlruss@fresnobee.com)<\/p>\n

Best sports photo, large dailies: Eric Zamora, a Fresno Bee photographer, won for a shot that perfectly captures a Clovis High football player leaping gracefully over a would-be tackler. \u201cNo caption needed,\u201d one judge wrote, according to the news release.<\/p>\n

\"Clovis<\/p>\n

Clovis High\u2019s James Curoso, top, hurdles over Clovis West\u2019s Andrew Garcia, bottom in the Range Rider game held Friday, Oct. 31, 2025 in Clovis. Clovis beat out Clovis West 28\u201317.<\/p>\n

Fresnoland, a local nonprofit, shared top honors with The Bee in the Public Service category for reporter Gregory Weaver\u2019s look at abuses of the state Williamson Act, which provides property tax breaks for certain owners of farmland threatened by development, the news release said.<\/p>\n

The Gruner journalism awards honor George F. Gruner, who retired as executive editor in 1988 after 33 years at The Fresno Bee. The McClatchy Co., publisher of The Bee, established the awards in 1989. The Department of Media, Communications and Journalism at Fresno State independently administers the awards. Entries are judged by professional journalists from outside the contest area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Fresno Bee took home top prizes in four categories at the 38th Gruner journalism awards on Thursday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[512,53969,112,3879,114,113,742,47394,19138,126581,83644],"class_list":["post-298814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-central-valley","tag-detention-facility","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-bee","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-fresno-state","tag-immigration-crackdown","tag-journalism-awards","tag-melissa-montalvo","tag-public-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}