A national press association for real estate journalists named the Southern California News Group winner of four awards for its coverage of housing stories in the aftermath of the 2025 Los Angeles firestorms.
Read more Trump says Reflecting Pool work is done and it’s set to be filled with water
The National Association of Real Estate Editors announced winners of its 2026 journalism competition on Wednesday, June 3, during its annual conference in Miami.
The NAREE awards come one month after SCNG was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for the staff’s wildfire coverage.
Former SCNG housing writer Jeff Collins won the Kenneth R. Harney Award for consumer education, one of the association’s top prizes, for his Feb. 23, 2025, package on how residents can harden their homes against firestorms.
Collins also won:
—First place for breaking news for his March 25, 2025, package on a new set of state maps designating the areas with the highest wildfire risks.
— Second place for online real estate reporting for a March 9, 2025, story about how fire victims watched their homes burn on their doorbell cameras.
— Third place for best residential story in a daily or weekly newspaper for a Jan. 19, 2025, story about the scramble among displaced residents to find housing after losing their homes in the fires.
Other top award winners in the association’s competition included the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Denver Post and Business Insider, as well as online real estate publications like The Real Deal and Bisnow.
A panel of judges from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism picked winners in 33 categories.
Read more French Open: Andreeva beats Kostyuk to reach 1st Grand Slam final
The Harney award was named for the late syndicated columnist Kenneth Harney, who wrote about real estate for the syndicated Washington Post Writers Group. He died in 2019.
Judges recognized SCNG’s home-hardening package for delivering “exactly what … readers want and need to know: how to fireproof their homes.”
SCNG’s doorbell video story takes “a devastating wildfire story and finds a striking, modern lens through which to tell it,” the judges added.
“By focusing on residents watching their homes burn in real time through doorbell cameras, (Collins) captures a uniquely current experience of loss that feels immediate and unforgettable.”
Firsthand accounts allowed “victims (to) tell the story through vivid, emotional detail, showing how technology can both deepen trauma and provide a sense of closure.”
The breaking news award was given for coverage of Southern California’s first new state-issued fire maps in 14 years.
The report “found the high fire zone grew 1.1 million acres, meaning property owners in those zones would have to comply with stricter fire building codes,” the judges said. But the report also noted that “some areas just destroyed by the January fires were left out of those high-risk zones.”
Collins retired from SCNG last August after 35 years at the Orange County Register.
Read more Alexander: Should we sympathize with Canada over its Stanley Cup drought?