An award-winning writer from The Indianapolis Star received the 2015 Will Rogers Humanitarian Award at the annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Marisa Kwiatkowski, an investigative reporter covering social services, was recognized for her outstanding work on behalf of children.
In nominating her for the award, the Star’s executive editor, Jeff Taylor, said, “She writes of children abused and neglected, beaten to death or left starving, and of failures in the protection systems in place for children and adults. Marisa takes on this responsibility with compassion, tenacity and enormous skills as a storyteller, producing some of our most emotionally evocative, thought-provoking and noble journalism.”
Taylor added that Kwiatkowski’s stories “have resulted in significant change. Two years of reporting on daycare issues resulted in legislation in 2014 that tightened the rules governing daycare operations.” For this achievement she, as part of a reporting team, won an award for best overall news writing from the Indiana Associated Press Managing Editors in 2014.