{"id":336855,"date":"2026-07-11T11:16:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T11:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/336855\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T11:16:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T11:16:27","slug":"miami-herald-and-wlrn-honored-for-killer-train-reporting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/336855\/","title":{"rendered":"Miami Herald and WLRN honored for \u2018Killer Train\u2019 reporting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/p>\n

A Brightline train rests on the northbound tracks after colliding with a vehicle near the 14100 block of Biscayne Boulevard in North Miami on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025. One person was airlifted to a trauma center.<\/p>\n

Photo by David Santiago<\/p>\n

dsantiago@miamiherald.com<\/p>\n

The national Society for Professional Journalists has bestowed top honors to a team of Miami Herald and WLRN journalists for their investigation into Brightline\u2019s staggering fatality record.<\/p>\n

The team won for non-deadline reporting in the society\u2019s Sigma Delta Chi Awards, with judges calling the project \u201cone of the most dramatically and graphically told stories we\u2019ve read in a long time\u201d and noting how its exhaustive reporting \u201ctranslated into compelling stories that matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cKiller Train\u201d investigation<\/a> revealed that Brightline \u2014 a privately operated, higher-speed train promoted as a model for the future of American rail \u2014 has become the deadliest major passenger train in the United States. Since 2017, more than 200 people have been killed by Brightline trains. That\u2019s an average of one death every 13 days of service.<\/p>\n

Soon after the first story in the series was published, the U.S. Department of Transportation released $42 million in federal money to improve safety along the tracks.<\/p>\n

The team behind the project included Miami Herald journalists Brittany Wallman, Aaron Leibowitz, Allison Beck, Matias J. Ocner and Susan Merriam, and WLRN reporters Daniel Rivero and Joshua Ceballos.<\/p>\n

The Brightline team was also recently named a finalist for the Sunshine State Awards\u2019 A-Mark Prize for Investigative Journalism. The winner will be announced Aug. 29 in Fort Lauderdale.<\/p>\n

These are the latest accolades for the project, which also garnered top honors from the Esserman Journalism Awards and Investigative Reporters and Editors. In May, \u201cKiller Train\u201d was recognized by the Pulitzer Prizes<\/a> as a finalist in local reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Brightline train rests on the northbound tracks after colliding with a vehicle near the 14100 block of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-336855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}